Search teams announced Thursday that pieces of debris found on the shores of western Australia were not related to Flight MH370, dashing latest hopes that material from the missing plane may have finally turned up.

Australia's Transport Safety agency told search coordinators that after examining photographs of debris found on the shores of Augusta, they were deemed to have no relation to MH370.

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As the US Navy's robotic sub Bluefin 21 neared completion of its scan of the seabed without turning in significant data, search teams said they will soon deploy more powerful sonar equipment to do the underwater search.

Australian officials said the sonar equipment to be used next is similar to the remote-controlled subs that found the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985.

The Titanic was en route from Britain to New York with more than 2,000 people aboard when it went down in the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg on April 15, 1912. It was one of the world's deadliest maritime accidents in peacetime.

The side-scan sonar equipment being eyed for MH370 is also similar to equipment used to locate the wreckage of the HMAS Sydney which sank in the Indian Ocean during World War II.

Bluefin 21, which belongs to the US Navy, has covered more than 90 percent of its target seabed search area, the search coordination center said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said if the search team does not find anything underwater, the officials will adopt a new search strategy, including deploying the powerful side-scan sonar equipment.

Abbott said they will not abandon the search because they owe it the passengers' grieving families and to the rest of the world to help solve the mystery of MH370's disappearance.

The search coordination center said the next phase of the search will be determined by available information that are continuously undergoing analysis, as well as by new information that may come in.

On Thursday, weather permitting, the underwater search will be supplemented by an air and surface search involving 11 planes and 11 ships that will examine a 50,000-square-kilometer area northwest of Perth. 

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