The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) believes that both Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, died when her plane crashed onto a reef off an island in the Pacific Ocean. The still believe that the two landed on a reef near the Kiribati atoll of Nikumaroro and survived for a short period of time.
Pat Thrasher, TIGHAR's president said to The Associated Press, ""This is just sort of the way things are in this world. It's not like an Indiana Jones flick where you go through a door and there it is. It's not like that - it's never like that."
The group is on its way back to Hawaii and will study the video and sonar data that they collected during the expedition.
During the expedition, Thrasher maintained updates on the group's website in which he said the search was cut short because of the hard-to-handle underwater terrain and equipment mishaps. The group was left with only five days of search time instead of the 10 that was planned.
Previous visits to the island have unearthed artifacts that possibly belonged to Earhart or Noonan. Earhart and Noonan were flying from New Guinea to Howland Island when they went missing. The date was July 2, 1937 during her unprecedented and historic attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world.
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