SYDNEY: Three ships will use “towfish” — underwater vessels equipped with Synthetic Aperture Sonar that creates high-resolution images of the ocean floor — in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

MH370 investigators have acknowledged they may be looking in the wrong place for the missing aircraft after an updated flight path analysis was released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

Until now experts had been concentrating on mapping the seabed in the southern Indian Ocean search zone where the plane carrying 239 people is thought to have crashed in March.

The Malaysian-contracted GO Phoenix vessel has now arrived in the area and begun its work scanning the ocean floor for the jet, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said.

“The vessel GO Phoenix, with equipment and experts provided by Phoenix International, has arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean, and commenced underwater search operations,” the bureau said in a statement.

After massive air and sea surface searches failed to locate any sign of the Boeing 777-200, and an undersea probe also came up empty-handed, experts analyzed satellite transmissions from the plane to pinpoint the best area to search for the plane.

Given the unknown nature of the ocean floor in that area — since found to include extinct volcanoes, sheer ridges and deep trenches — a bathymetric survey to map the seabed was considered vital before an underwater search could start.

This survey, which has mapped some 110,000 sq km of the remote area since May, has paved the way for the work of the GO Phoenix that will conduct a deep-water, side scan sonar search.

The GO Phoenix will tow sensitive underwater equipment over the seabed in the hunt for irregularities, such as large parts of the aircraft that could still be in intact like the engines and fuselage, the ATSB has said.

“With this system, detailed high resolution images of the search area will be collected and analyzed in real time... in an effort to locate the wreckage of MH370,” Phoenix International said in a statement late last month.