@.Scott
The Reuters news agency quoted anonymous officials "close to the investigation" as saying no new signals from the plane had been detected "since day one."
If true then:
a. surprising what Burullus is doing then ... certainly at this stage of the search ...
b. you would expect the search to 'spiral outward' then, say filling a circle of 25 nm diameter, perhaps Cazalet33 can say something about this,
c. the French research vessel referred to above and its patterns will tell us more later,
It is also not clear what kind of signals they are referring to ... was it a signal from the plane, from the radar, or a ULB (if not a spurious one) ...
Just thinking. Authorities could also decide that in modern times it is better to clearly state the main points of what they know, what they dont know, and what assumptions are the basis for the activities that are ongoing. This could also indicate and educate people on the complexity of these searches and investigations. All this leaking and anonymous stuff ... makes a bad impression on the general public.
An illustration of this could be the find of another probable MH370 fragment today. It was found by a guy who by chance had just seen a few photos of earlier finds. During the MH370 search an Australian SAR official was quoted who said that his experience was that people could not recognize such fragments as being from an aircraft - especially when they had been in the water for (even) a (short) while. After the fact other officials say that this find is a prove of the accuracy of the drift predictions. That also surprises me, if these predictions were so good as claimed, why did they not publish them as soon as possible with a request to the public to report possible finds. And the give the public (and seafarers) a number of examples of what they might expect to find and see.