A 17-person search team has gone ashore on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in Kiribati, to examine the “Taraia Object”, a shape in the island’s lagoon. The team thinks it could be Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. Sceptics think it is a fallen tree.
The team is from the Archaeological Legacy Institute, the Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University. It went ashore on Tuesday 13 October, according to a Purdue University news release. Fieldwork was to begin on Wednesday 14 October.
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Ashore
The team arrived on Monday after five days at sea, but too late to land, according to Purdue.
On Tuesday it cut a trail to the lagoon within two hours. Along the way it met at least four coconut crabs. It reached the Taraia Peninsula by 1pm local time, Purdue said in its update.
Team members return to their ship, the Marin Mainiku, each evening, according to Purdue.
The Marin Mainiku crossed 830 nautical miles of the South Pacific to get there, BBC News reported. It is the first authorised trip to Nikumaroro in seven years, and the first visit to the Taraia Peninsula in more than 15, BBC News reported, citing Purdue.
Coconut crabs, which the team met on the trail, are the world’s largest land-dwelling crustacean, and can lift up to 28kg, according to BBC News.
The Taraia Object
The object takes its name from the part of the island where it was first noticed, in a 2020 satellite image, the Guardian reported. The expedition says it is visible in aerial photography dating back to 1938.
It is believed to lie 10 feet from the shore, in as little as five feet of water, depending on the tides, BBC News reported.
“Finding Amelia Earhart’s Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” expedition leader Richard Pettigrew said before he set sail this month, the Guardian reported.
In the same statement, he said: “Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof.”
The Doubters
Not everyone expects a plane. Tighar co-founder Ric Gillespie believes the object is likely a dead pandanus tree, the Guardian reported.
Gillespie has been to the spot before. He and other teams visited the exact site in 2001 and 2007 with metal detectors, according to the Guardian.
“There’s nothing there, or we would have found it,” he said in an interview this year, the Guardian reported.
The 1937 Flight
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished in July 1937 while trying to fly around the world. They were flying from Lae, in Papua New Guinea, towards Howland Island when the plane disappeared, BBC News reported.
Howland is about 400 miles north of Nikumaroro, according to the Guardian.
The search has a Purdue connection that goes back to the flight itself. Purdue, through its research foundation, funded Earhart’s Electra “Flying Laboratory”, according to the university.
What the Lagoon Might Hold
No finding has been reported from the lagoon. Researchers planned to dredge sediment to inspect the object, BBC News reported. prw will follow the expedition in its International coverage.
The work was expected to take five days, according to BBC News.
Sources: Purdue University, “Earhart expedition update: Crew arrives onshore, sets up operations on Nikumaroro”, 13 October 2026 (https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/2026/Q4/earhart-expedition-update-crew-arrives-onshore-sets-up-operations-on-nikumaroro/); BBC News, “Crew searching for Amelia Earhart plane lands at remote island infested with carnivorous crabs”, 12 October 2026 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pvgryp8yv0o); The Guardian, “Is it a plane or a tree? Amelia Earhart expedition aims to solve mystery of disappearance”, 12 October 2026 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/12/amelia-earhart-lost-plane-remote-pacific-atoll-expedition)
Photo: Underwood & Underwood, public domain, National Air and Space Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons.
Amelia Earhart beneath the nose of her Lockheed Electra, believed to date from March 1937, a few months before she vanished.
