French company ALSEAMAR is providing a vessel specialized in the search for marine wreckage to join the hunt for the black boxes from crashed EgyptAir flight 804, Reuters reported. Investigator Ayman El Moqadem said “negotiations were also underway to contract a second firm to help in the search.” Reuters says “The black boxes are believed to be lying in up to 3,000 meters of water, on the edge of the range for hearing and locating signals emitted by the boxes. Maritime search experts say this means acoustic hydrophones must be towed in the water at depths of up to 2,000 meters in order to have the best chance of picking up the signals.” The ALSEAMAR ship is due on station sometime early this week, the New York Times suggests, while Bloomberg is reporting that a second ship has been commissioned from Deep Ocean Search Ltd. Meanwhile, Bloomberg confirms Ahram Gate’s report of last week that five European and U.S. satellites captured Flight 804’s emergency locator transmitter as it automatically began broadcasting a distress signal at 2:36am on the morning the flight was lost.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal raises the question of whether a known fault in a smoke-detecting sensor (even in a new version put in place to address the issue) could be at fault in the crash. “Long before EgyptAir Flight 804’s pilots received an alert signaling smoke in a vital electronics compartment, U.S. safety watchdogs documented that such warnings on that airliner model were frequently erroneous and sometimes prompted unnecessary and risky cockpit responses.”