photo credit: Youtube
Next time you’re stuck on hold with your internet provider, listening to some of the finest musical compositions known to modern man, to complain about slow internet speeds, you may get blindsided with a new excuse – sharks!
Yep.
Sharks.
CaliforniaDiver.com recently posted an article about the extensive network of communication cables crisscrossing the world’s oceans.
Amazingly, 99% of all our global communication flows through hundreds of thousands of miles of cables. And these cables are vulnerable to ship-strikes and sharks.
TeleGeography’s submarine cable map
Reports of sharks biting undersea cables go back to 1987. The New York Times reported, “sharks have shown an inexplicable taste for the new fiber-optic cables that are being strung along the ocean floor linking the United States, Europe, and Japan.”
Scientist have theorized sharks may be attracted to the electrical field generated by the cables.
The website oAfrica, which tracks digital news on the continent, wrote in 2009 :
“Unlike short-haul terrestrial fiber cables or old copper cables where the fiber did not emit noticeable fields, undersea cables must carry high voltage power to the undersea repeaters, which result in both electric and magnetic fields around and along the cable … Some sharks mistaken the electric fields for distressed fish and attempt to feed on the cable.”
Dr. Chris Lowe, one of the founders of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach has different threory. He told Wired Magazine that sharks may just be curious about the cables. “If you had just a piece of plastic out there shaped like a cable, there’s a good chance they’d bite that too,” said Dr. Lowe.
video via: Lanca VideosHD
Regardless of the reasons for cable gnawing, communication companies are taking steps to protect their infrastructure.
Google currently owns over 100,000 miles of fiber optic routes around the world and a 5,000-mile-long cable that spans the Pacific Ocean.
Dan Belcher, a product manager on the Google cloud team, told California Diver that Google goes to great lengths to protect its infrastructure, including wrapping its trans-Pacific underwater cables in Kevlar to prevent against shark attacks and other damage.
Of course there are doubters to the threat sharks pose to our global communication system.
The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) doesn’t seem to think sharks are a threat:
“The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) has reviewed records of cable faults worldwide, and together with an assessment of the video, conclude that much of the media hype was incorrect. Essentially, sharks and other fish were responsible for less than one percent of all cable faults up to 2006. Since then, no such cable faults have been recorded,” the group said in a message.
So the next time your internet connection is slow and Netflix is not streaming and you want to complain to your provider, be aware that shark may chomping on some cable deep under the ocean.
Source: CaliforniaDiver.com