Charleston, SC (WCIV) – Amelia Earhart disappeared more than eight decades ago, but Charleston's own Tony Romeo believes her plane may have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Earhart disappeared in the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe with navigator Fred Noonan.
Romeo is a pilot, comes from an aviation family and is always fascinated Earhart's story. He left his commercial real estate career to embark on a more adventurous life, which led him on a mission to find Amelia and her plane.
Amelia Earhart was so inspiring, and it's a story that I think you can't help but fall in love with,” Romeo said. “My favorite quote from her is, 'Why do you do this?' She was preparing to leave on a trip around the world, 'Why are you doing this?' She said 'because I want to'. I love that answer. This is correct.
Those four words drove Tony Romeo inside Solve the mystery She disappeared.
“The way to do this is if we buy the equipment and turn it into a business, we can continue to look for Amelia. Once we've done a specific project, we can go back to the area. Keep looking, and the idea was that we're going to find her eventually, that's the goal.”
The idea to continue this has been in the works since 2022. In September 2023, his crew began a three-month journey across the Pacific Ocean.
On board with them was an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, called the HUGIN 6000.
“It goes down to about 50 meters below the surface, and then it hits. It goes back and forth, back and forth, and it looks a mile wide, and it sends sound and hears it coming. Again, then it paints a good picture of what it saw,” Romeo said. said.
When they pulled the AUV out of the water, the data revealed something incredible.
You see strange rock formations and things on the bottom of the ocean, but you're not going to see that nice T-shape that a plane makes, and we saw that.
A miraculous moment for Romeo and his crew. The sonar image was captured about 100 miles off Howland Island.
“I remember, Golly, it's the first time I've seen her in 86 years, so it's kind of a sobering moment, but two people died there, too. So, we have to keep that in mind,” Romeo said.
