Updated

A hotel owner in Mozambique says the sandbank where a possible piece of a missing Malaysian airliner was found is in waters with treacherous currents and is not normally visited by tourists.

Tony Manna, who owns a beachfront hotel in the Mozambican town of Vilankulo, said Friday that American adventurer Blaine Gibson was a guest at Manna's lodge when he discovered debris that could be a piece of tail section from Flight MH370, which disappeared March 8, 2014 with 239 people aboard.

Manna says in an interview with The Associated Press that he connected Gibson with a boat operator nicknamed "Junior," who took the American to the Paluma sandbank and first spotted the debris there.

The airliner is believed to have crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.