Amelia Earhart Expedition Sails Five Days, Spends $900,000 and Successfully Identifies a Tree

For nearly 90 years, Amelia Earhart has been the undefeated world champion of hide-and-seek. On Monday, the seekers announced that they had found a tree.

The Taraia Object, a plane-shaped smudge spotted in 2020 satellite images of Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in Kiribati, was "likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula's sandspit," Purdue University said. The metallic glint came from "a shiny concretized amalgam of coral sand." Even the lagoon, it turns out, owns highlighter.

Other longtime Earhart hunters had called it a fallen tree years ago. In this field, being right early is not a discovery. It is a prophecy nobody funds.

The 17-member team included Purdue's general counsel, two astronaut alumni, two maritime archaeologists and four filmmakers. It is the first search party in history with more cameras than suspects. Bringing a lawyer to a lagoon was wise: somebody had to tell the tree it had the right to remain silent. The watchmaker Bulova was among the sponsors, so at least everyone knew exactly what time they didn't find it.

They sailed five days from Tarawa, then rough seas trapped them aboard ship until the expedition had to be extended. Even on good days, they slept offshore to avoid coconut crabs, "whose size and overnight activity make staying on the island impractical." Seventeen explorers crossed the Pacific to solve aviation's greatest mystery and were run off the beach every night by the appetizers.

The sensors found no metal. "We think it's most likely that the object was a collection of debris that accumulated here," said Rick Pettigrew, the expedition's director. That is also the scientific definition of a garage.

Then came the bill. Pettigrew funded the $900,000 expedition with a line of credit from Purdue, National Geographic reports, and it has to be paid back. Purdue paid for Earhart's plane in the 1930s and has now lent money to look for it. It is the only aviation program in America with a layaway plan. Purdue's general counsel, Steve Schultz, had already noted the school got its largest share of "earned media" on the day the trip was announced. The plane is still missing. The press release landed safely.

The mood remains sunny. "We accomplished our goal to determine what the Taraia Object was," Pettigrew said, adding, "Our team remains in great spirits." Rarely has anyone been so cheerful about a log. The team also recovered a steel tube about 30 inches long, which will "continue to be studied." At $900,000, it is the most expensive plumbing in the Pacific.

The tree joins a distinguished list. In 2024, a company announced "what appears to be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra." It was a rock formation. In 2017, a photo said to show her in Japanese custody turned out to come from a travel guide published nearly two years before Earhart and Noonan met. The search has now positively identified a rock, a brochure and a tree. At this pace, the next expedition will confirm a lovely stone wall.

"She kept flying, and we will keep searching," Schultz said, and another company is already raising money for its fourth try. Earhart remains undefeated at hide-and-seek. The tree, meanwhile, has been found, filmed, lawyered and billed, and would very much like to go back to being a tree.