Tropical Cyclone Gillian
Chris Scott " I'm not aware of any major storms in the search area in the interim, but I stand to be corrected."
While the search was concentrated on the area south-west of Perth, TC Gillian passed through the current search area. Whilst it had weakened from its original Cat 5, it would likely have been generating wind and waves enough to pulverise any larger pieces of wreckage, and widely disperse anything left floating.