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The search will cover a 15,000 sq km area in the southern Indian Ocean, under a "no find, no fee" agreement with the exploration firm Ocean Infinity.

Military analysts estimate two-thirds of the 1,000 sq/km gained at the outset have since been lost.

It is now an estimated 3,234 sq km.

Its end-of-summer extent fell from an average of 7 million sq km in the 1980s to 4.5 million sq km in the 2010s.

But current sea-ice extent is nearly 0.2 million sq km below anything previously recorded for the time of year, and has been tracking very low since late 2024.