The search for the cockpit voice recorder aboard flight 111 had been postponed by two days because of bad weather and rough seas around the crash site in St Margaret's Bay.

Investigators said they remained confident that they would quickly recover the box that contains the critical audio recordings of conversations among the cockpit crew.

As divers returned to work in the evening, medical specialists in charge of identifying the victims braced for the recovery of bodies from three large pieces of the MD-11 fuselage spotted at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Bodies are known to be in the debris. But underwater photos showing one piece of the fuselage have given pathologists little information on their state of decomposition.

Specialists say that the water temperature is hovering around freezing point,increasing the likelihood that the bodies might be well-preserved and possible to identify.

Authorities have struggled to identify the victims because the bodies of passengers and crew were badly mangled when the plane slammed into the Atlantic.

According to a television network, two more bodies had been identified Thursday. They include one US national.

Some relatives of the victims have left Nova Scotia while others have decided to extend their stay for a few days hoping that their loved ones would be identified soon.

So far, between one percent and two percent of the MD-11 jet has been recovered. The biggest pieces -- five of them -- are set to be hoisted to the surface starting Saturday by the US ship-crane Grapple.

The military ship ``Halifax'', with a crew of 230 and a helicopter on board, was set to take over the recovery operation and replace the frigate ``Preserver'' at the scene of the crash.

As for the other black box containing the flight data recorder, investigators at an Ottawa labstudying the data say that ``fault codes'' appear at the end of the recording.

Chief investigator Vic Gerden said that investigators have not had ``enough time to understand''.