Turning Point: A Conversation with Tom Dettweiler

We’ve all been on a pretty incredible run lately. This little rebrand idea for the show I had about a year ago, was only supposed to be a couple of new episodes. Never in a million years did I think we’d still be going with more debuts, returning guests and new revelations. The last year has been one of the most tumultuous years in the history of this  Earhart game and I’ve learned that in this story, the twists and turns are never over.

There are very few people whom I consider to be giants in this case. And tonight’s guest is certainly no exception. He’s got dual master’s degrees in marine science and ocean engineering with a year of his education coming courtesy of Purdue University, interestingly enough and he’s used those degrees to go on to create perhaps the most impressive resume ocean exploration has ever seen. 

He worked with Jacque Cousteau on the search for the world famous Calypso, and was the operations manager for Bob Ballard’s historic Titanic discovery. And in 1999, he was also instrumental in the discovery of the Dakar - an Israeli submarine that had been missing without explanation for decades. Incidentally, that was the same year that Dana Timmer led the first deep ocean expedition in an attempt to locate Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan’s lost Electra which at that time, had been missing for 62 years. When they say it can’t be done - when they say it’s impossible, Tom Dettweiler says, “well, we’ll just see about that.” 

6 years after his debut on the show, he returns to us now to discuss the status of the white hot deep ocean search for Earhart & Noonan, the state of the case as a whole and to give us all a much needed dose of his legendary eternal optimism. And we could all use some of that right now. Fresh back from the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, this….is Tom Dettweiler.

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