No wreckage or bodies from the MV Princess Ashika were found yesterday in the first underwater mission conducted by the combined Australia and New Zealand Dive team, using underwater-specialised search equipment.

Commander Andrew McMillan of the New Zealand Dive Team said they used "arenas", which looks like a torpedo and swims above the ocean floor finding objects at the bottom, he said in a joint press conference with Tonga Police Commander Chris Kelley this morning on day five of Operation Ashika.

In Sunday's mission they were deployed on the TDS MV Pangai in the last known emergency located beacon position, which also contained an oil spill. The mission was conducted on 100 metres depth in a flat area bottom, which seemed the most likely position, where they put the arenas flying underwater searching an area in a half a mile by half a mile box.

This area is 85kms from Tongatapu and 11 kms from land so it is in the middle of the ocean.

He said it was a successful mission that took about an hour. They looked at the information and had high level of confidence in the images. "But we did not find anything within that half a mile by half a mile box," he said.

Cmdr McMillan said further analysis was conducted and it was apparent that some oil was coming from outside that located beacon position they searched. Overnight they programmed another mission and expanded the box to one and a half miles by one and a half miles.

Bad weather

We tried to go out this morning at 5:30 but the weather condition was very bad and we haven't been able to conduct that second mission. In the meantime the vessel returned to anchor and the forecast weather for today and tomorrow are strong winds.

"So it is unlikely that we will be able to conduct further operations today or tomorrow. We expect that we would not be able to deploy for the continued search mission until tomorrow night."

Cmdr McMillan said to give people an expression of how difficult the task is "just imagine four or five rugby fields with a car there at night and use a torch to shine to try to find it. And then put 60 to 100m of water on top of that, with uneven ground where the vessel can hide behind a hill, is very challenging," he said.

"The depth limitation for the sonar equipment is a 100m, if the wreckage is deeper, we do not have the capability to reach beyond that depth. The divers cannot go beyond 50m in depth."

He said the alternative is there are other international organisations that are able to go deeper and it is of the Tongan Government to decide that.

We are still in the very early days of the underwater search operation the environment we are working on is not a search and rescue mission, it takes time and it has taken all this time to search, he said.

Surface Search

In the meantime Comdr Kelley confirmed that as of last night they finished off the aerial search for both the NZRAF Orion and a charter flight that was deployed to the area. But the charter flight was then directed to the Niuas because of an urgent medical need.

The areas identified now for search, cover the location of the first may-day call picked by coastal radio, followed seconds later by the emergency beacon location, which was very close within 100m and the third position where a life raft was recovered by TDS and where there was oil spill.

The nay have grouped them into two primary locations, first is 60 to 110m water and the other around sea-mountain with 35m to 100m or beyond.

"This gives the navy team a good indication of the right area to look at," he said.

93 missing persons

Commander Kelley confirmed the figure remains at 149 names on the list of persons on board with 54 rescued, two dead and 93 people unaccounted for, but the figures may grow, he added.

He said the reality is that after five days they have not found any more survivors, there are only two dead bodies and there is a shifting focus to locating the vessel and bodies onboard.

"But I don't want to give up hope and I don't think we should give up hope because someone or some people may have survived somewhere. And we are doing our best to locate the vessel at the same time we must also accept that we may not locate the vessel."

The Commander said they would not release the missing persons names until they are certain because it is very important for the nation to have accurate names of those on board.

"I sympathise with family who are waiting, not knowing if loved ones are alive or not. The best I can do is to reassure them that we are conducting every effort to locate the vessel, survivors or recover any bodies."

"So far we have only identified the European male, the identity of the female body remains unknown. It is difficult because we had four families coming in for one body, and not one can identify the person."

Investigation ongoing

Media quiries were also put to the Commander, whether the sinking was caused by a natural diaster as said by previous press conference.

The Commander answered the elements of the sea was involved no doubt, but really the cause cannot be speculated at this point because a lot of factors are associated with it, he said.

Questions was also asked based on speculations made there were leaks in the haul of the vessel, the Commander answered they don't have any of that information but clearly it should be documented in results of interviews.

But now we are concentrating on rescuing of survivors, location of bodies and the investigation will also take part, said Commander Kelley.