Let's assume that these incidents actually were accidents, there's still a bigger question open: why is trawler fishing still allowed? Imagine it's not a fiber cable that ends up being crushed by a trawl door... but all the other marine life: Fish can swim away (or not, being the point of getting fished), but plants, corals, bugs?
Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16:
> Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European seas from the cumulative
impacts of demersal fishing, coastal developments and other activities. Preliminary
results from a study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe’s
shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to be physically disturbed,
which is mainly caused by bottom trawling. A quarter of the EU’s coastal area has
probably lost its seabed habitats.
Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even if it's just to protect our fiber links.
I agree. The more you learn about trawling the less you’ll understand why it’s still permitted in so many places.
Where I live it’s cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing is that it’s strictly permitted in territories where we know rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we commonly fish for.
We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective.
Fishing as carried out industrially is terrible for the environment as a whole, and really often also exploits those employed in it. The huge army of Asian fishing fleets that skirt the law and the ethics of both sides of this are the worst of the worst, however, and deep sea trawling is particularly awful.
Then again, farmed fish isn't exactly ecologically brilliant either...
Complete agree. The hidden damage we are doing to marine ecosystems is horrendous.
I love eating seafood but have basically given it all up due to environmental concerns, there's very few fisheries left that are harvested sustainably and farmed fish as an alternative cause a host of other problems for marine wildlife in the area.
Even the sustainable types of fish usually end up with huge amounts of bycatch that it's hard to justify eating them too.
At this point the only seafood I can eat is something I've caught myself and isn't of concern for sustainability, Australia is lucky in that respect with quite a few species thriving but we still face a lot of illegal fishing in our waters that's incredibly hard to police.
Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for an arctic island is a big deal.
What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the satellites that look back at us.
To be pedantic - most places on Earth can get a contact with a polar orbiting satellite at least once or twice per day, however the number of contacts per day increases the closer you get to the poles. Svalbard is far enough north that you get lots of contacts per day. I forget the exact number and I don't have STK open in front of me to simulate it, but from memory it's something like 15 or so contacts per day for a typical earth observation orbit. This gives you lots of data and relatively frequent contacts to maximize the freshness of the imagery.
There are tons of commercial observation satellite operators that use Svalbard for downlink (downlinks at Svalbard can be procured commercially through a company called KSAT which operates the station). Ukraine has been purchasing a lot of imagery from these companies, including both optical and radar imagery. If I had to hazard a guess at a possible motive, that'd be it.
Correction: not one per day, one per revolution. Since the satellites go from north to south pole while the earth is spinning, the polar areas is the inly the pass each time.
Most probably Russia will claim sovereignty over all of the Svalbards after the next big war and redrawing of borders, Stalin was too circumspect in not scaring the Americans into WW3 the first time when they had the chance to do it.
All that because whoever controls the North Pole controls most of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s actually one of the very few “ways in” inside North America and control of the continental United States (there were a few US geopoliticians/geographers who first became aware of that in the early 1940s).
> I wonder how much data per unit of time this is capable of transporting.
The max throughput of fiber optic cables isn't exactly constant. As fiber optic modem and DSP technology improves you can get much higher speeds on 15+ year-old cables than were ever possible when they were laid.
I think NASA helped fund it because they wanted more (And more reliable) data to a groundstation on the island, not because this subsea cable is anything special.
Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
This reminds me of a story in "Blind Man's Bluff," summary:
[Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was dotted with signs warning, “Cable Crossing — Do Not Anchor,” so a boater would not foul the cable.
At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables, including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet, from being damaged.
As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications.
Is it possible to tap fiber-optic cables without the owner getting wise? Even if you could tap modern cables, I assume everything is now encrypted and carries so much bandwidth that it becomes possible to sample the interesting intelligence.
Had a case in Canada where a fisherman ignored the maps and kept picking up a fibre optic line with their fishing gear, and eventually cut it with a saw (twice):
(I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity for amplifiers)
> In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did not know what it was but managed to free his anchor
> The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and he cut it again.
> Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.
TL;DR of the court cases: the fisherman was guilty of damages to the tune of $1.2M, and his insurance cover was voided because his act was so reckless.
Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
The idea of being way out on the open water, and pulling up your anchor and finding that it is bringing up some giant steel-wrapped black cable up out into view as you look over the edge of your boat, going off in either direction downward into the seemingly infinite deep water... brings up some crazy weird primal fear [1] in me. I wouldn't even want to touch it, let alone haul the cable onboard and cut it. I'd cut loose the anchor chain and hope to see the thing again.
I’m probably being really slow but I couldn’t really work out what the pictures are actually showing. I see a bunch of yellow cables and some with steel sheathing - I’m not really sure what I’m looking at? Are all those cables laid together or are these photos of just one actual cable that has been fully pulled up and coiled?
Yes, that must be the coil of cable after they had started pulling it off of the seabed. The steel armoring is supposed to be a bunch of steel wires tightly wound around the cable, to protect it from damage.
We once booked a night on Rebak Island, next to Langkawi, Malaysia.
The day before our arrival I receive a call that a boat somehow broke the water pipe which lies on the bottom between Rebak and Langkawi, cutting the island off from fresh water, and whether I wanted to rebook to another hotel.
Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it kinda fitted the context :)
What kind of international law can we expect in the future? A law that is constantly broken by various maleficent actors? Of course we've heard them complain that the current order is run by the west and harmful to others. What are the alternatives? A hundred cables?
If by "the russians" you mean russian defence, I can guarantee they would use something as inconspicuous as a trawler for the job rather than a combat vehicle
Ah excellent, fishermen not only destroying the ocean but also the infrastructure of countries. When will peoples appetite for destroying the ocean be qualled?
[+] [-] mschuster91|1 year ago|reply
Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16:
> Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European seas from the cumulative impacts of demersal fishing, coastal developments and other activities. Preliminary results from a study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe’s shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to be physically disturbed, which is mainly caused by bottom trawling. A quarter of the EU’s coastal area has probably lost its seabed habitats.
Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even if it's just to protect our fiber links.
[1] https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17...
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|1 year ago|reply
Where I live it’s cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing is that it’s strictly permitted in territories where we know rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we commonly fish for.
We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective.
[+] [-] azalemeth|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Grimburger|1 year ago|reply
I love eating seafood but have basically given it all up due to environmental concerns, there's very few fisheries left that are harvested sustainably and farmed fish as an alternative cause a host of other problems for marine wildlife in the area.
Even the sustainable types of fish usually end up with huge amounts of bycatch that it's hard to justify eating them too.
At this point the only seafood I can eat is something I've caught myself and isn't of concern for sustainability, Australia is lucky in that respect with quite a few species thriving but we still face a lot of illegal fishing in our waters that's incredibly hard to police.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|1 year ago|reply
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/mud-muck-and-death-cambodi...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8823369/Gree...
https://www.huckmag.com/article/paolo-fanciulli-the-italian-...
[+] [-] 0xedd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bjornasm|1 year ago|reply
What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the satellites that look back at us.
[+] [-] Sanzig|1 year ago|reply
There are tons of commercial observation satellite operators that use Svalbard for downlink (downlinks at Svalbard can be procured commercially through a company called KSAT which operates the station). Ukraine has been purchasing a lot of imagery from these companies, including both optical and radar imagery. If I had to hazard a guess at a possible motive, that'd be it.
[+] [-] bjornasm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|1 year ago|reply
All that because whoever controls the North Pole controls most of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s actually one of the very few “ways in” inside North America and control of the continental United States (there were a few US geopoliticians/geographers who first became aware of that in the early 1940s).
[+] [-] mgoetzke|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] next_xibalba|1 year ago|reply
This is amazing. I wonder how much data per unit of time this is capable of transporting.
Wikipedia says "Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s." [1]
Wikipedia also notes that NASA helped fund this system.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
[+] [-] varenc|1 year ago|reply
The max throughput of fiber optic cables isn't exactly constant. As fiber optic modem and DSP technology improves you can get much higher speeds on 15+ year-old cables than were ever possible when they were laid.
Recently I saw an article about researchers getting 300,000 Gbit/s over existing fiber optic cables (though I'm sure that's a long way from being a deployable technology): https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/aston-university-researc...
[+] [-] Scoundreller|1 year ago|reply
Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
[+] [-] Hikikomori|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mvkel|1 year ago|reply
Either the former is understated, or the latter is way overkill.
Or, I'm misunderstanding. Which is probably the most likely possibility.
[+] [-] cjrp|1 year ago|reply
https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514
[+] [-] the_gipsy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] goodcanadian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] csmpltn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|1 year ago|reply
>After an inital investigation, the police dropped the case due to lack of evidence, and inadequate legislation.
[+] [-] adolph|1 year ago|reply
[Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was dotted with signs warning, “Cable Crossing — Do Not Anchor,” so a boater would not foul the cable.
At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables, including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet, from being damaged.
As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications.
https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james...
[+] [-] fbdab103|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Kon-Peki|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] new23d|1 year ago|reply
https://forensicssource.com/collections/evidence-markers/pro...
[+] [-] Aurornis|1 year ago|reply
It's more likely that they take photos with both measurements.
[+] [-] alufers|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lobochrome|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] threeseed|1 year ago|reply
Perhaps they intended for the information to be shared with US intelligence.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|1 year ago|reply
(I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity for amplifiers)
https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc49...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communica...
> In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did not know what it was but managed to free his anchor
> The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and he cut it again.
> Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.
[+] [-] resolutebat|1 year ago|reply
Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
[+] [-] mk_stjames|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia
[+] [-] tailspin2019|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] db48x|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymousiam|1 year ago|reply
https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
[+] [-] jorisboris|1 year ago|reply
The day before our arrival I receive a call that a boat somehow broke the water pipe which lies on the bottom between Rebak and Langkawi, cutting the island off from fresh water, and whether I wanted to rebook to another hotel.
Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it kinda fitted the context :)
[+] [-] sschueller|1 year ago|reply
At this point this seems to be the most common cause of see cable damage.
I guess the captains decide that it's worth dumping the anchor in a storm to protect the cargo even if the area "forbids" it.
[+] [-] swader999|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] Waterluvian|1 year ago|reply
This is magic to me. Anyone have a search term I could use to better understand how electricity is used to boost a fibre optic signal?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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