Divers resume search for AirAsia wreckage

Frustrated by days of poor weather, divers plunged back into the choppy waters off Indonesia early Wednesday to search for large objects believed to be pieces of the AirAsia plane that crashed more than one week ago, an Indonesian official said.

A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Fort Worth, detected the latest two objects on Tuesday at a depth of 28 meters (92 feet) near the Karimata Strait off Indonesia, officials said.

"We will start to identify the wreckage, which appears to be part of the jet's body, as quickly as possible," Indonesian search and rescue operation coordinator Tatang Zainudin said as operations resumed after daybreak.

A break in the bad weather conditions permitted divers to return to their undersea search in the murky Java Sea.

The airliner's black box voice and data recorders may be in the tail section, searchers believe.

"Divers were ready on the ship but the challenges were currents and waves," Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, said Tuesday.

The search operation will expand by about 70 square miles, he said.

Two more bodies were retrieved Tuesday, bringing the total to 39. There were 162 people on the flight that crashed Dec. 28 about 40 minutes after taking off from Surabaya — Indonesia's second-biggest city —— to Singapore.

"Time is of the essence," said Suryadi Supriyadi, the National Search and Rescue Agency's director of operations. "But it seems like it is hard to beat the weather."

Soelistyo said an American ship, the USS Fort Worth, located two large metal objects using sonar at a depth of 92 feet, but officials could not yet determine if they're from Flight 8501. Five other large objects possibly from the plane have been detected on the ocean floor. Strong currents, silt and mud have kept divers from reaching the pieces.

What caused the Airbus A320 to crash is still not known, though Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency says bad weather appears to have been a factor and that icing is a likely culprit.

During the flight, the pilots had asked permission to climb to avoid storm clouds. Other aircraft were in the vicinity, so air-traffic controllers denied the request. Minutes later the jet vanished without giving a distress signal.

Contributing: William M. Welch, USA TODAY; Associated Press