t's spirit of courage and curiosity drove every step of the search,  Pettigrew said Sunday.  We accomplished our goal to determine what the Taraia Object was, and we're deeply grateful to the private donors who shared our vision and made this journey possible. Our team remains in great spirits and proud of what was accomplished. 

The team had developed plans to photograph and film the lagoon and Taraia Object before using magnetometers and sonar equipment to survey the area. Researchers then planned to retrieve the object for identification. The Archaeology Channel documented the expedition through short video updates on its Heritage Broadcasting Service streaming platform.

The research team previously said in a news release that there was  very strong  evidence that the object is Earhart's lost plane.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared on July 2, 1937, roughly 22,000 miles into their trip. Earhart was attempting to become the first female pilot to circle the world, and the first pilot to do so around the equator, Earth's widest point.

American aviator Amelia Earhart at a refueling stop in Khartoum, Sudan, with the Lockheed Electra 10E in which she was attempting to circumnavigate the world with navigator Fred Noonan, on June 13, 1937. Getty Images

Recently, President Trump ordered the declassification of records related to Earhart.

Nikumaroro is part of the archipelago country of Kiribati, located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The island lies about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, where Earhart and Noonan were headed when they disappeared during their attempted flight around the world.

Pettigrew believes Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro and survived there for some time. He points to relics dating to the 1930s and to human remains discovered on the island, which were later lost as possible evidence. However, several competing theories about the aviator's disappearance have emerged over the decades, many of which lack conclusive evidence.

Researchers have spent decades searching for Earhart's plane, hoping its discovery could shed light on her disappearance. In 2024, an expedition team captured a sonar image of what appeared to be an aircraft on the ocean floor, but the object was later identified as a rock formation.