Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible

Sharks are innocent. Or at least they are not eating the internet. As a family of cartilaginous fish, sharks are collectively not guilty of most, if not all, charges of biting, chomping, chewing or otherwise attacking the underwater network of fiber-optic cables. The people who build and maintain the nearly 600 subsea cables that carry almost all of our intercontinental traffic—supporting just about every swipe, tap, Zoom, and doomscroll anywhere on the planet—have a love-hate relationship with this myth, which has persisted for decades. They might even hate that I’m starting this piece with it.

If a cable is suspended over the seabed, a shark might gum it as it explores. Sometimes, they will lunge for a cable that is being pulled out of the water. But for a shark to actually bite a cable, you'd have to wrap it in fish, much as you'd hide a pill in a hunk of cheese for the dog. Rats can be a threat on land, because their incisors never stop growing, so they like to file them down on semi-soft cables. But nobody ever asks about rats, maybe because, as a friend of mine pointed out, "sharks make you cool, but rats sound like you have a problem."

Sometimes, people ask about satellites or, especially in Sweden (where I live), about alleged sabotage in the Baltic Sea. But historically, shark bites have commanded the most attention. The myth began nearly 40 years ago, with the development of a subsea fiber-optic cable known as TAT-8. TAT-8 practically invented the concept of an internet cable, and now that it's ready for retirement, I spent time with the offshore workers, crew members and engineers who are in the process of pulling it off the seabed. That’s the real story of subsea cables—not sabotage or sharks, but the humans who take care of the physical stuff that keeps all of our digital communication flowing.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.