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New French satellite images show possible debris from a missing Malaysian airliner deep in the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysia said on Sunday, adding to growing signs that the plane may have gone down in remote seas off Australia. From reuters http://mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSBREA2701720140323?irpc=932

My conception is that both"deep" and "off" means away from. The word " deep" does not necessarily mean " deep in the water" . It says it went down. It is confusing. Previous satelite pictures has identified debris on the water not in the water. Why the writer has written deep in the ocean.

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'Off' in the context given here, means 'situated or leading in a direction away from'. Let us substiute this in the sentence to make it clearer.

..adding to growing signs that the plane may have gone down in remote seas situated in a direction away from Australia

'Deep', when used as an adverb (as it is here), means 'far down or in'

So our sentence becomes,

New French satellite images show possible debris from a missing Malaysian airliner far down in the southern Indian Ocean...

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    And deep*=*far down doesn't mean vertical depth or distance down, it means horizontal 'depth', remoteness from land. – StoneyB on hiatus Mar 23 '14 at 13:30
  • To aid visualization, I would say "deep in the forest" is similar to this usage of "deep in the southern Indian Ocean". – Damkerng T. Mar 23 '14 at 13:38

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