The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat

[eggy]

I guess I am biased to like the article including it's presentation, since I spent 6 years as a technical diver fixing underwater hydraulics and electrical systems, but at much shallower depths than the undersea cables. A buddy of mine is an ROV operator for pipe-laying ships. Cool stuff, big stuff, and lots of crazy stuff involved (seeing weird, unidentifiable living creatures quickly and blurrily cross in front of the ROV's camera, etc.).

I remained hidden below water as a technical show diver, while 1800 to 2000 audience members topside were getting impatient with a "technical delay" show pause. Typically, we were checking for faults in safety systems on underwater lifts, or for a potential hydraulics leak. We'd exit under the audience seating and go back to work after clearing the issue.

In a world filled with high-tech desk jobs, finance, and non-tangible products, and having grown up working class, I have great respect for all the people behind the scenes physically keeping our tenuous world together. Some of this became readily apparent with once invisible food delivery and restaurant workers during COVID. Healthcare workers obviously came into their own too, but so many other workers were still taken for granted.

I visualize a person huffing when their internet is slow or intermittent with a guy out to sea working during a storm or under difficult conditions and I laugh at the juxtaposition and perspective of both. I also do rope work and had to resort to doing more of it during COVID because my 'desk work' dried up a bit. Hanging 300ft off of a building with a black balaclava and mask with all-black rigging equipment in NJ doing a facade inspection across from the FBI building was certainly a memorable one. (Note: all-black equipment is standard for theater and entertainment work to stay hidden. I did confirm the FBI building people were informed there would be 4 guys on ropes that day. You never know!). I have been programming since 1978, but I have always had to have some physicality to my work in order to be satisfied. I guess it's having a more tangible connection to the world not abstracted away several layers.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

> I have always had to have some physicality to my work in order to be satisfied

This also describes me pretty well. I was trained as a merchant ship's deck officer but opted to not go to sea as a career. Instead, I've spent my career building embedded systems. Every so often, I build a desktop app or a web application, but it lacks the satisfaction of being able to touch the hardware and actually watch my code affect something in the physical world.

[pimlottc]

What sort of shows were these that you worked on as a technical diver? Is this a Seaworld-type of situation? But not sure why they would need underwater lifts.

[wglb]

Great story. Worthy of a blog post or several.

[alistairjudson]

My Dad was an ROV technician for a brief period in the early 2000s, he got made redundant in early 2002 just after 9/11, and the dot com bubble bursting.

On his last of the only two trips he made, he was based in Recife in northern Brazil. The ship was just there, on call, ready to respond to any breakages.

My Mum, sister, and I were lucky enough to be flown out to Brazil for Christmas 2001, and it's something I'll never forget. I got to fuse bits of fibre-optic cable together under a microscope, drive an ROV about in the harbour a bit, and stand in some massive cable drums (all incredibly exciting for an eight year old child). It was the first time I went abroad, and the first time my Mum flew on a plane.

It's amazing how much damage the dot com bubble bursting did to the industry, and the people who worked in it (I don't think my Dad ever really recovered from it). I believe until very recently there was so much fibre laid during the dot com boom, that we didn't really need to lay much more.

[khuey]

> I believe until very recently there was so much fibre laid during the dot com boom, that we didn't really need to lay much more.

My understanding is that there was a one-two punch of the dot com boom laying a huge amount of fiber followed by wave division multiplexing shortly afterwards massively increasing the capacity of existing fiber that resulted in an oversupply that lasted a decade or more.

[ed_blackburn]

Hi, ex Nortel Networks employee here.

[croisillon]

hi, i spent christmas 2001 in brazil too :)

[underseacables]

If you find this interesting, I highly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage".

The book discusses "Operation Ivy Bells" whose mission was to tap the underwater Soviet communication lines during the Cold War. The submarine installed a recording pod onto Soviet cables and recorded everything.

How did they find the cables?

A technician told a story about growing up on the Mississippi river, and how you could often find a sign on the bank, telling you that there were underwater cables. He hypothesized that the same thing might exist in the Soviet union.

Sure enough, the submarine secretly crept into Soviet water, popped the periscope, and found a sign in Russian on the bank, saying be careful, underwater cables.

It's rumored that when the Soviets learned of this, they went down and found the pods. During disassembly, they found a stamped plate deep inside which read "Made in the USA."

[Ajay-p]

The article is fascinating but the website is a disaster.

This makes it marginally easier to read: https://archive.is/IpfNq

[SAS24]

Telegeography (cited in the article) publishes an interactive submarine cable map: https://www.submarinecablemap.com

You can even buy printed versions: https://shop.telegeography.com/collections/telecom-maps/

[el_benhameen]

The submarine cable map has long been on my want-to-splurge-but-can’t-justify list. Would make great office art.

[manmal]

Interestingly, I can’t see a single line from the US to Russia or China (not sure about the latter).

[Octokiddie]

For those complaining about the presentation, Safari's "Show Reader View" works well. Also supported on Firefox. On Chrome, it's complicated.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

However, you will miss a couple of rather cool transitions from line-drawn images to moving photographic images. It is reminscent of rotoscoping, but not the same. I sense a new art form, similar to when those GIFs with only a single moving object appeared some years ago.

[TrailMixRaisin]

I think I would love the article but the presentation makes it necessary hard to enjoy.

[jc_811]

I actually loved the presentation of it, kudos to whichever team collaborated on it!

[cfn]

Yes, you run the risk of sea sickness with all the unexpected screen scrolling direction changes.

Still a good and interesting article.

[kwhitefoot]

I just used Reader mode, didn't even need JavaScript.

Do read it. It's a well written and also very affecting insight into the lives of people doing essential work under difficult conditions.

[balou23]

Yes, absolutely impossible to read

[ctenb]

I stopped after the first 3 slides, since the information density is too low and the animation too slow.

[98codes]

This article definitely wins my award for the most unnecessary scrolljacking -- the animations add no value, are too short, and only serve to delay being to read further in the article.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the information density is too low

You failed the marshmallow test [1]. There is a traditional, long-form article that presents a rewarding read.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experim...

[khuey]

For those who have never seen it, Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth Mother Board" for Wired in 1996 is the must-read classic of this genre. Wired seems to have paywalled it recently but it's available on archive.org

https://web.archive.org/web/20151107094324/https://www.wired...

[gabcoh]

And if you’re craving even more telecoms history after that (as I was when I read it a few years ago) Arthur C Clarke’s “How the World Was One” goes into the history of undersea cables and other telecoms technologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_World_Was_One

[davidw]

That immediately came to mind when I saw this article.

[badbart14]

Great read about a often overlooked part of global infrastructure. I personally liked the presentation style but get its not for everyone. Highly recommend the latest episode of the Vergecast where they talk more about the undersea cable world: https://youtu.be/bJnt87JgKMU

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you read the article, and didn't think to get a little more information the SS Great Eastern, mentioned early on as the first cable repair vessel, here you go:

https://historicaldigression.com/2011/03/28/the-great-easter...

[ryanmarsh]

Nothing will compare to standing in a book store as a teen reading Mother Earth Mother Board, published in wired, while my Coke got warm.

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

[hn_throwaway_99]

The opening section, which felt like it was trying to build tension around the 2011 tsunami, seemed a bit weird to me. I thought tsunamis were only a problem close to shore or in relatively shallow water. The boat mentioned in the beginning was in 500 feet deep water, and indeed the article said the tsunami passed imperceptibly.

Anyway, otherwise I thought this was an enjoyable read.

[dfc]

ABC.au had a similarly named show on the topic back in December. I have to imagine they are related:

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/cloud-under-the-sea/video/NS23...

[JeremyNT]

In fiction, underwater cables play an important role in Stephenson's 1999 classic Cryptonomicon [0]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

[FireBeyond]

Simple, but perhaps silly, question. If a fiber optic cable breaks underwater, the crew brings it up to the boat. But what if there is water contamination? Like if a fiber strand is broken or exposed, what's to prevent water particles entering the fiber?

[billfor]

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40071540

[JumpCrisscross]

“The first submarine cable, strung across the English Channel in 1850, survived for a single day before — in what may be apocryphal cable industry slander — a French eel fisherman accidentally hooked it, sliced off a piece, and came ashore bragging about his discovery of a new type of metal seaweed.”

[acomjean]

It’s amazing it worked. Especially “electrical” non fiber optic cables.

There is a museum on cape cod which was the end point of some early electrical cables (1891). It’s kind of interesting.

https://www.frenchcablestationmuseum.org/

Of course eclipsed by the wireless Marconi station..

[m463]

Something about the look of that orange lifeboat makes me think back to my childhood, watching my share of japanese cartoons.

[ChrisArchitect]

Isn't the title of this "The Cloud Under The Sea"?

Or at least it was on the other submissions days ago

[RicoElectrico]

Some news outlets A/B test their headlines.