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This information was revealed in part through the alternate reality game
Find 815
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Characters:   Sam Thomas · Sonya · Tracey R · Sam's mother · Mr. Ockham · Oscar Talbot · Other...
Companies: Oceanic Airlines · The Maxwell Group · Austral Air
Locations: Sunda Trench · Black Rock


The Sunda Trench was the location where the faked wreckage of Flight 815 was discovered. It is the second deepest trench in the Indian Ocean and is located several hundred kilometers off of the southern and western shores of Indonesia. It was first specifically mentioned in he alternate reality game Find 815 but was later mentioned in television episodes as well.

Episodes[]

In "The Brig", late in Season 3, Naomi Dorrit claimed an ocean trench off of Bali is where the wreckage of Flight 815 was discovered four miles deep, and, that people sent down robotic cameras to survey the wreck, locating all of the passengers bodies. In that same episode, Anthony Cooper stated essentially the same story, but did not mention the location of the discovered wreckage. Early in Season 4 in "Confirmed Dead", an on-the-air television newscaster stated that a salvage vehicle, the Christiane I, after searching for sunken trading ships for two months, discovered the aircraft wreckage in the Sunda Trench. This trench was subsequently also mentioned in the Season 4 DVD extra The Oceanic Six: A Conspiracy of Lies.

Geography[]

Sunda Trench

The Sunda Trench

Sunda Islands

The Sunda Islands

The trench is a product of two major tectonic plates meeting, with the oceanic plate driving under the plate supporting the mainland. The Sunda Trench is approximately 3,200 kilometers long [1] and over 7.7 kilometers (4.8 miles) deep. Maximum depth measurements vary for the Sunda Trench at 7.5 to 8.0 kilometers, making it the 13th-15th deepest ocean trench in the world. It is also commonly referred to as the Java Trench. The trench is named after the Sunda Islands, which form part of Indonesia. The Greater Sunda Islands bordering the trench are Sumatra and Java. Bali is the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands that border the trench. Presently, a sole location called "Sunda" does not exist. Centuries ago, Sunda was considered the region of Western Java.

Extreme seismic activity in the western end of the Sunda Trench caused the December 2004 tsunami [2] that devasted many northern Indian Ocean coastlines and low-lying islands. The alleged crash location of Flight 815, south of Bali, is 2,500 kilometers from the tsunami epicenter, and was unaffected by any tidal impact [3].



Flight 815[]

Note: information garnered from Find 815 is subject to semi-canon and non-canon policies described at Canon.

Chapter 1 of Find 815: Sam Thomas' web search[]

Sundra webpage image

Sunda map with locations of importance marked

Quoted from http://www.findinfoout.com/sundatrench within Sam's browser:

The Sunda Trench is an oceanic trench located the Indian Ocean off the island of Sumatra. Numerous aircraft and vessels have gone missing in the region of the trench over the year, giving it a somewhat mysterious reputation akin to the Bermuda Triangle's.

The Sunda Trench is certainly situated in one of the most geologically violent spots in the world: it is near the collision point for several tectonic plates, there are large numbers of active volcanoes in the area and earthquakes are frequent. Some of the devastating natural disasters that have occurred in the Sunda Trench region include:

-The 1815 volcanic eruption of Tombora on Sumbawa Island, thought to be the most massive in recorded history.

-The 1883 volcanic eruption on Krakatoa Island, an explosion so violent it was heard 5'000 km away.

Sunda with Tsunami

Sunda webpage with tsunami information

The following text was originally seen on the site in Sam's browser, but it has since been omitted.

-The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami, killing over 225,000 people.


  • Although the information regarding the 2004 tsunami was removed from the browser on Sam's laptop, the star on the map and date of the tsunami (December 26, 2004) still remained for a while, accompanied by a yellow star representing the earthquake and tsunami which occurred on March 28, 2005.
  • The star and legend on the map were later removed altogether, leaving no trace that the tsunami was ever mentioned or included on the web page.

== Chapter 2 of Find 815: Sunda Stories ==

Sunda no Tsunami

Sunda webpage with tsunami info removed

The Christiane I was docked at Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia (on Java). After Sam got aboard the Christiane I, he found a website that listed notable planes and ships that had been lost in the Sunda Trench since 1566. (Find 815 clues/January 8). It also made note of failures with electronics and compasses:

The Sunda Trench

List of some notable planes and ships lost in the Sunda Trench:

  • 1566 -- Loss of Portugese trading vessel on trip from Ambon Island
  • 1693 -- Disappearance of noted early Dutch explorer Conrad Van Eyck
  • 1815 -- British fighting vessel "Princess Mary" reported missing with all hands on trip from Cape Town
  • 1914 -- Japanese steam freighter goes missing on expedition to New Guinea
  • 1931 -- Dutch freighter vanishes returning from Timor, crew of 29 on board
  • 1933 -- British warship disappears during expedition
  • 1937 -- Pilot involved in search for Amelia Earhart disappears off coast of Sumatra
  • 1944 -- Several American bombing planes go missing in region on routine mission, despite no reports of storms or enemy activity
  • 1948 -- Dutch merchant ship SS Ourang Medan was found adrift off Indonesia with all of its crew dead. The ship subsequently caught on fire and sank.
  • 1951 -- US submarine disappears during patrol of waters
  • 1955 -- British plane en route to Thailand disappears with 7 crew and 13 passengers -- one week later a plane sent out on a rescue mission also vanishes
  • 1957 -- US seaplane lost with 10 crewmen
  • 1964 -- American aircraft carrying 55 military personnel to South Vietnam vanishes
  • 1966 -- British navy boat on patrol during Indonesian confrontation vanishes -- initially this loss was thought to be due to Indonesian military, but later release of classified documents from the Indonesian government indicated this was not the case
  • 1973 -- French sailor disappears during round the world yacht expedition
  • 1975 -- privately-owned plane carrying Minister in Indonesian government vanishes with 6 people on board
  • 1981 -- Japanese commercial plane with 2 pilots and 42 passengers disappears en route to Jakarta
  • 1981 -- Pleasure craft captained by West German business tycoon disappears
  • 1988 -- Indonesian commercial plane disappears over ocean, 238 people on board
  • 1998 -- Taiwanese freighter lost
  • 2003 -- ship High Aim 6 left Taiwan on October 31, 2002 - found floating in Australian waters without its crew on on January 8, 2003.

In addition to these, there have been reports of a high incidence of unexplained electronics failure in the area. Compasses have also been known to behave erratically.


Notes[]

Most of the stories listed in the second chapter are either apocryphal or outright fictional.

  • The High Aim 6 was a real ship whose crew disappeared somewhere between Taiwan and Australia.
  • There was no Princess Mary in the British Navy in 1815. However, there was a ship by this name operating under the British East India Company in 1815, but she was not lost at sea. Having completed four voyages, this ship was broken up one year later, following repairs for storm damage.
  • No British Navy boat went missing in 1966 near Indonesia.
  • Stories have been told of the S.S. Ourang Medan, but the existance of the ship and truth of the stories have never been established. No proof has ever been found to show that the ship existed, and it is currently believed to be a legend of the sea.
  • No US submarine went missing in 1951. This particular 'report' may be based on the loss of the USS Scorpion or the USS Thresher, two American nuclear submarines that were lost in the 1960s.
  • No Dutch explorer named Conrad Van Eyck is known to have existed.
  • No American transport plane was lost in 1964; the claim that a number of Allied bomber aircraft were lost in the area during World War II is similarly unsubstantiated, although a variety of wartime factors may have caused actual planes to go missing in this area, though not at a notably higher rate.

Literary References[]

  • In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver is first shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput. An illustration found in early editions of the book show that Lilliput is southwest of the Sunda Straits.
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