Pilot believes he found Amelia Earhart’s plane on the ocean floor

(NEXSTAR) — For nearly 90 years, the world has been vexed by the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her plane.

Back in 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan left Miami in a Lockheed Electra 10-E plane on a journey that would make Earhart the first woman to fly around the world. But with just 7,000 miles left on the trip, Earhart and Noonan lost radio contact near the Howland Islands, nearly 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Earhart, Noonan, and their plane were never found, despite extensive searching in the area, according to the National Women’s History Museum.

An explorer believes he has since cracked the case.

Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, explained how he sold his commercial properties to fund his search for Earhart’s plane. The Charleston, South Carolina, real-estate investor believes that search was successful after he was able to collect a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object on the ocean floor. Those images were shared on Instagram.

Experts told the outlet that the location Romeo was in would line up with where Earhart’s plane is believed to have disappeared and that the sonar images are enough to encourage another look.

Romeo says he plans to do just that, calling it “maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life.”

Romeo’s company, Deep Sea Vision, said in a social media post that they scanned more than 5,200 square miles of sea floor as part of the expedition. He told NBC’s Today he’s confident the images they capture do show an aircraft, and more specifically, Earhart’s Lockheed Electra E-10 plane.

The company plans to go out again to the site to get a better look at the site with more technology.

There have been numerous attempts to locate Earhart’s plane over the last few decades.

Last year, a forensic imaging specialist began analyzing an underwater photo taken in 2009 near Nikumaroro Island that many speculated to show an engine cover from Earhart’s plane.

Speaking with Nexstar’s NewsNation, science journalist Jeff Wise urged caution about jumping to conclusions, saying, “People are just really hungry for any kind of clue; they’re so hungry that maybe they’ll look at random pictures and see a shape that maybe reminds them of some part of an aircraft.”

There are also theories that Earhart didn’t crash into the ocean at all, but instead landed on an island in the South Pacific. Research Ric Gillespie told CBS News in 2018 that he found documentation that Earhart was calling for help from the island using the plane’s radio before it washed out to sea.

While those signals were picked up by the Navy — and, reportedly, people in Florida, Iowa, Texas, and Canada — the rescue mission was too late. Gillespie said the plane would have washed into the ocean, and Earhart would have no way to send out more radio signals. He also told CBS that his organization has forensic evidence that bones found on the island are likely Earhart’s.

There were bones found in 1940, though they’ve since been lost. Measurements remain, however, and have been the cause of back-and-forth speculation in recent years. In 2018, University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz said an analysis determined “the bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer.”

It’s too soon to tell whether the debris captured on sonar by Romeo and his team are, however, Earhart’s ill-fated plane.

NewsNation’s Zaid Jilani contributed to this report.