Search for Amelia Members of the TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) land team step off of the reef and onto the shore of Nikumaroro to begin their work day searching for potential human remains at the "Seven Site" on August 19, 2019. The "Seven Site" is the supposed location of the 1940 discovery of a castaway's partial skeleton, possibly belonging to Amelia Earhart. Dr. Tom King pauses at the start of a "Gallagher Highway," a nickname given to the path that TIGHAR cuts through the jungle to the lagoon at the beginning of each trip on August 12, 2019. King has visited the island dozens of times over the course of three decades and for him it is a spiritual experience. As is customary in part of the Pacific, King rubs wet sand on his cheeks each time he returns to Nikumaroro and says a prayer of peace and thankfulness to the goddess of the Island. Dr. Bob Ballard watches from the top deck as the crew of the E/V Nautilus retrieves the ROV Hercules from the waters off Nikumaroro Island on August 12, 2019. Hercules can search the slope of the island down to the sea floor several miles below. Bob Ballard watches as expedition co-leader Allison Fundis pilots the ROV Hercules, discovering a sheet of metal with rivets in the waters off Nikumaroro Island on August 14, 2019. The metal was rusted, a sign that it was not from Earhart's Electra, which was made mostly out of aluminum which does not rust in salt water. Divers search the reef off of Nikumaroro Island for pieces of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10-E on August 16, 2019. Divers can reach shallower portions of the reef that are inaccessible to the E/V Nautilus' remotely operated vehicles Argus and Hercules. Amy Kleppner, the niece and closest living relative to Amelia Earhart, photographed at the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum on July 18, 2019. Amy only recalls meeting her aunt a few times, but remembers that she received gifts sent by her from Asia that arrived in the mail shortly after her disappearance over the Pacific in 1937. The Ren Tree at the Seven Site, under which it is theorized that Amelia's bones were found by Gallagher, the British colonial officer in charge of the island, and his team in 1940. Photographed on August 20, 2019. A telegram sent by British colonial officer, Gerald Gallagher, to his superiors sits in the Kiribati National Archives on August 1, 2019. The telegrams notify the colonial government in Suva, Fiji of a partial skeleton discovered on Nikumaroro Island in 1940 that may have belonged to Amelia Earhart. Controversially, no American authorities were told of the discovery, a fact that may have changed the fate of Amelia's story.
