April 4, 2014 -- Updated 1759 GMT (0159 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: A month later, still holding on to hope: "See you in the morning for breakfast"
- Two naval vessels begin the underwater search using listening technology
- They focus on the "area of highest probability" of where the plane may have hit water
- The visual search resumes Friday with more than two dozen ships and aircraft
Perth, Australia (CNN) -- The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took on increasing urgency Friday as searchers began scouring the ocean floor and the batteries powering its locator pingers approached the end of their expected lifetimes.
If they die, so too could investigators' best hope of determining what caused the jetliner to vanish from radar screens last month.
Fourteen aircraft and 11 ships were involved in Friday's activities, reported the Australian agency coordinating the search efforts.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has determined a search area of about 84,000 square miles (218,000 square kilometers), 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northwest of Perth.
Weather in the area was good, with visibility greater than 6 miles (10 kilometers).
But searchers were fighting steep odds.
"Really, the best we can do right now is put these assets in the best location -- the best guess we have -- and kind of let them go," U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks told CNN. "Until we get conclusive evidence of debris, it is just a guess."
Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders, said, "If they do find it, I think it'll be remarkable."
The decision about where in the southern Indian Ocean to focus British and Australian naval ships equipped with sophisticated listening technology was nothing more than an educated guess of where the plane may have hit the water.
On Friday, ships did report sightings of objects, but none were linked to plane debris.
The British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield began searching the depths Friday along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the search.
The Ocean Shield is equipped with high-tech gear borrowed from the United States:
• The Towed Pinger Locator 25 contains an underwater microphone to detect pings from the jet's voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters). It is towed behind a vessel that typically travels at 1 to 5 knots, depending on the water's depth.
"It is a very slow proceeding," said Capt. Mark M. Matthews, director of ocean engineering.
• The Bluefin-21 is an underwater vehicle that can scour the ocean floor for wreckage and can also be used to find mines. It is 16.2 feet long, weighs 1,650 pounds, can work for 25 hours at 3 knots and can operate to a depth of nearly 15,000 feet.
The ocean in the search area is 6,500 feet to 13,000 feet deep.
Since the devices don't require daylight, they can search around the clock.
The HMS Echo also carries advanced sensor and survey equipment.
But time is running out -- the batteries that power the recorders' pingers, or locator beacons, are designed to last at least 30 days from the time they begin operating.
The Boeing 777-200ER was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared on March 8. If it crashed into the water, its recorders' pingers could go mute as soon as Monday.
The decision about where to focus the underwater search was based on the same kind of analysis of radar, satellite imagery and other data that investigators have used to determine a series of shifting search areas in recent weeks.
"The area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence," Houston told reporters Friday. "It's on the basis of data that arrived only recently, and it's the best data that is available."
'Long way to go'
The search also was continuing above the waves.
Officials have repeatedly warned of a potentially prolonged hunt for the missing passenger jet.
Houston said Friday he expects the search area to continue to be adjusted on "a semi-regular basis."
"We've still got a long way to go," he said.
In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But it took them nearly two years to find the main pieces of wreckage, the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board.
With Flight 370, the search teams have even fewer clues.
On Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that "we cannot be certain of ultimate success in the search" for the Malaysian aircraft. He described it as the most difficult search "in human history."
Authorities have yet to explain why the plane flew off course or where it ended up; investigations into the 227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any of them might have been behind the disappearance.
Families' frustrations
Malaysian officials held a briefing for Malaysian relatives of those aboard MH370 on Thursday evening at a Kuala Lumpur hotel, but attendees told CNN that nothing new had emerged.
Mohammad Sahril Shaari, whose cousin Mohammad Razahan Zamani was a honeymooning groom on the plane, said the three-hour session had felt like a "waste of time."
He added, "I was hoping for some news that they had tracked the plane or some parts of it, but nothing like that happened."
Selamat Bin Omar, the father of another passenger, Malaysian civil flight engineer Mohammed Khairul Amri Selamat, said officials described in detail the satellite data that has led investigators to the current search area.
"They could not tell us if the plane crashed," he said. "They said they were still looking into it."
Danica Weeks, wife of passenger Paul Weeks, said after the meeting that the jet's disappearance still perplexes her. "The hardest process for me is understanding that a commercial airliner can just go black," the New Zealander told CNN's Paula Newton.
"That someone can just turn off all communications, all matter of tracking an airliner, and it can just disappear. And this is the mystery."
About the search for the plane, she said, "If it's there, they will find it. But are they in the right place? It's all calculations. It's all guesswork."
Hanging on to hope
Weeks said her infant son Jack will celebrate his first birthday next month, and their 3-year-old son, Lincoln, was still coming to grips with their loss.
"Dad was everything for him," she said. "He read Lincoln always his bedtime story, and they had this saying that they'd say -- you know, 'Good night, I love you and see you in the morning for breakfast.'
"And now he comes out and I tell him that Dad is up in the sky, and we come out every night and we find the brightest star. We find the brightest star and he says, 'Good night, Daddy, I love you. See you in the morning for breakfast.' And that breaks my heart."
But, four weeks after the plane vanished, she too has not given up on seeing him for breakfast.
"I know it sounds crazy, but I still have a slight hope, you know," she said, adding that she will be able to grieve only after confronted by evidence of his death.
"The grief at this point still hasn't started for me," she said. "I have my moments, but until I have evidence, I still don't know."
The partner of American passenger Philip Wood was also among those who attended Friday's meeting. "The only thing I learned last night after three hours is that the Malaysian families are more calm and rational than the Chinese," Sarah Bajc told CNN's Judy Kwon in an e-mail.
"But they are equally frustrated and have totally lost faith in the Malaysian government."
Bajc noted that officials have concluded that the jetliner flew over Malaysia "for quite a long time."
"It is impossible that this relatively sophisticated military power didn't see it," she said. "They are clearly hiding something. We just don't know what."
Malaysia refuses to let families hear the plane's radio communications
The Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation denied a request by Malaysian families to release the audio recording of radio communications among the pilot, co-pilot and air traffic control, two people who attended the briefing said.
The department's chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told the relatives that even the families of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid have not been allowed to listen to the recording because it is part of an ongoing investigation, the two attendees said.
Malaysian authorities released a transcript of the recording Tuesday.
"This is an event that is so unprecedented and I think that is so significant that it can never be allowed to get off the screens, get off the radar," K.S. Narendran told CNN's Erin Burnett.
His wife, Chandrika Sharma, was on the flight.
"My concern is that if we don't really get to the bottom of it, we cannot really be certain that we are safe and that we are secure every time we board a flight."
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