NTSB officials say Thursday that finding the voyage data recorder of the sunken container ship El Faro was like finding the needle in a haystack at a press conference in Massachusetts.
Crews found the data recorder on April 26 but did not return it to the surface. It was below 15,000 feet of water and still attached to the ship's mast.
The NTSB teamed up with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to find the recorder and officials say its about the size of a basketball. There should still be 12 hours of the El Faro's navigational data; audio from the bridge of the ship.
They say it also recorded an additional 2 hours of audio and data.
While there still is a chance they may not recover the data, officials are confident they can.
"I would say we're hopeful that the data's good on it," Brian Curtis said. He's with the Office of Marine Safety, which is part of the NTSB.
"The capsule is designed for 20,000 feet - of course, it did go through some significant rumbling around down there from the video that we've seen and that's been in the press," he said.
Thirty-three lives were lost after the El Faro sailed in Hurricane Joaquin 100 miles off the coast of the Bahamas.
"To find it alone is an incredible work by everybody out on that vessel, but now we know where it is," Curtis added. "We certainly can get back out and get to it. We know it's securely fastened to that mast."
The trouble now is getting back out there and getting it to the surface.
NTSB officials say they're still months away from being able to extract that info from the voyage data recorder