KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 ― The search for a missing Malaysian airliner in icy waters thousands of kilometres southwest of Perth will be made all the more difficult by the amount of detritus from everyday human living likely to be in the ocean, The New York Times reported.

Among the larger items found at sea include mattresses, docks, crates, cargo containers and tangled masses of abandoned fishing nets, buoys and other gear, it said in a report today.

“Any search and rescue attempt will be hampered by untold quantities of debris,” the paper quoted Charles Moore, a sailor who studies marine debris at the Algalita Marine Research Institute in Long Beach, California.

The marine debris is concentrated in gyres which are large oceanic regions with circulating currents, the paper said.

The search area for the missing jet is on the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean’s debris-concentrating gyre, Moore was quoted as saying.

He said that the storm system that halted search operations on Tuesday could carry debris into, or out of, the gyre.

There are no firm data about marine debris but studies of shoreline cleanup projects and other activities suggest that four-fifths of what is floating in the ocean originates from land sources, the paper said, adding that natural disasters including hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis, also contribute large amounts of debris.

The tsunami that hit northern Japan in 2011, washed around  five million tons of material into the ocean, it said, citing  Japanese government estimates.

While about 70 per cent of it is likely sunk quickly, the rest dispersed across the seas,  it said, adding that  boats, a trailer with a motorcycle inside, and several floating docks, including one that was 70 feet long have reached the west coast of North America.

Debris from the 2004 tsunami that struck Indian Ocean countries is still floating around even though the equator would normally act as a wall, preventing the detritus from reaching the southern hemisphere, the paper quoted experts as saying.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the 239 people on board disappeared less than an hour after the Beijing-bound flight left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am on March 8. The plane and its passengers remain missing despite over two weeks of intensive searching by a multinational effort.