US amateur investigator Blaine Gibson is searching for MH370 evidence and is in Augusta asking people to be on the lookout for debris along the South West coastline.
Mr Gibson has spent the last three years travelling around the Indian Ocean trying to find the missing Malaysian Airlines aircraft which disappeared on March 8, 2014.
The plane was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board when it went missing.
“I have always loved to travel and solve mysteries and this one really inspired me because it is in real time, involves real people who lost their loved ones, who need and deserve answers,” he said.
“It involves aviation, oceanography, science, politics, everything.”
Mr Gibson has already found pieces of the missing plane in Mozambique and Madagascar after he was told by a professor where he could find parts of the wreckage.
The search for the missing plane has captivated Mr Gibson who has since found 15 pieces of the plane and hundreds of personal affects and hopes to find answers for the families and flying public.
“I cannot let it go I am part of it and I have to make sure the truth is found out,” he said.
Mr Gibson is on his way to Augusta, because no debris he found in Africa, has ever been recovered from Australia.
“If it was as far South as were they were looking, South of Cape Leeuwin, things would have gone East towards the Southern Coast of Australia and Tasmania,” he said.
All the debris from the plane has washed up on the African side of the Indian Ocean, which Mr Gibson said, meant the crash site was further North than investigators thought.
The oceanographer who told Mr Gibson where to look said by now it was possible that debris would circle back and wash ashore in Southern Australia.
“Meaning the Southern Coast of Western Australia,” he said.
“Most likely it could miss Australia too and keep circling back but it could get caught up in those Southern currents and wind up on the coast of the Southern Ocean.”
Mr Gibson said people needed to be on the lookout and keep their eyes open for some of the distinctive things that could be from the plane.
People should be looking out for unusual piles of bags all in the same condition, pieces of aircraft or cabin debris, with parts of the interior having a distinctive honeycomb veneer and black carbon fibre.
“The hexagon is the strongest geometric shape, bees use it for their hives, and aircraft engineers use it to design aircraft, it is like a plastic composite” he said.
The weight of missing aircraft items would be very light, similar to driftwood, and would quite likely be thin.
If people do find items which appear unusual or could possibly be from the aircraft they should take a photo of the item before handing it into local police.
Mr Gibson is also hoping to find out more information about an item which was found in Scott River, even though the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the item was not from the aircraft.
“It is very good he found that and handed it in for it to be studied and examined but it was found by the ATSB not to be from the plane,” he said.
He would also like to talk to people in Augusta who claim they saw a plane on the day MH370 went missing.
Mr Gibson wants to find the evidence by letting the ocean do the work and looking on the shorelines to find actual pieces of the plane.
He also talks to witnesses who saw something even if it didn’t fit the data to consider what they said objectively and with an open mind.
“In doing that I have been successful,” he said.
“I still do not have a theory, I am still investigating.”
