http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-malaysia-plane-garbage-20140331,0,6568580.story

Malaysia plane: Search goes on in ocean's stirred 'teacup' of garbage

By Barbara Demick
This post has been updated. See the note below for details.
March 31, 2014, 8:23 a.m.

BEIJING ? The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of
Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered
what oceanographers have been warning: Even the most far-flung stretches
of ocean are full of garbage.

For the first time since the search focused on the southern Indian Ocean
10 days ago, the skies were clear enough and the waves calm, allowing
ships to retrieve the "suspicious items" spotted by planes and on
satellite imagery.

But examined on board, none of it proved to be debris from the missing
plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around in the ocean.

"A number of objects were retrieved by HMAS Success and Haixun 01
yesterday," reported the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in a news
release Sunday. "The objects have been described as fishing equipment
and other flotsam."

[Updated at 8:38 a.m. PDT on March 31: A cluster of orange objects
spotted by a search plane on Sunday drew the same results, the
Associated Press reported the following day: It was just fishing
equipment.]