Photo of an undersea cable in cyprus.

Have you ever wondered where the cables go that connect your computer to web sites overseas? Well if you live in the USA and are visiting a website in Asia then the connection travels directly under gCaptain HQ in Morro Bay California on it’s way across the Southern Cross Cable. But if you live elsewhere then you need only to consult TeleGeography’s free interactive submarine cable map. The chart is based on authoritative Global Bandwidth research, and depicts active and planned submarine cable systems and their landing stations. Selecting a cable route on the map provides access to data about the cable, including the cable’s name, ready-for-service (RFS) date, length, owners, website, and landing points. Selecting a landing point provides a list of all submarine cables landing at that station.

Cables shown include international and US domestic submarine cables with a maximum upgradeable capacity of at least 5 Gbps. Cable routes are stylized to improve readability, and do not reflect the physical cable location. Similarly, cable landing stations do not show the precise coordinates of the building, and are meant to serve as a general guide to where a cable system lands.

While most charts will show the location of subsea cables, they often don’t differentiate between regular telephone lines and massive, high dollar, fiber-optic connections. So be sure to consult the map before anchoring you ship near a subsea cable or risk shutting down the internet of an entire continent. No seriously!

In a study released Thursday, the Interior Department said subsea power transmission cables generate electromagnetic fields that are detected by several marine organisms. It is unclear, however, whether those electromagnetic fields will disrupt important life functions among the species, such as prey detection or navigation, the study says.

Research is being conducted as the Interior Department to promote offshore wind-energy projects, which will require subsea cables to transmit electricity generated offshore to an onshore power grid.

In April, the Interior Department approved the first construction and operation plan for a U.S. offshore wind energy project, granting approval to Cape Wind Associates to construct more than 100 turbines in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts.

Given advances in the commercial development of offshore wind energy, “we must continue our effort to expand our knowledge and understanding of the potential effects on the marine environment,” Michael Bromwich, director of the Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in a statement.

Despite the gaps, Thursday’s study says companies that construct and design power cables can take steps to reduce electromagnetic field emissions. Among them are measures to adopt certain designs and configurations.

-By Tennille Tracy, Dow Jones Newswires

Image courtesy NOAA

Aker Marine Contractors will install the cable utilising its new-build subsea installation and construction vessel, AMC Connector. She will install 106,5 kilometres of cable – in one length – stretching from Hammerfest, Norway, offshore to the Goliat  FPSO.

The subsea power cable, supplied by ABB, will weigh approximately 6 000 tonnes. The AMC Connector – previously called Aker Connector – will easily take this in one load as she will be equipped to handle a total payload of 9 000 tonnes, divided onto two turntables for high voltage power cables or subsea umbilicals.

“With her high payload capacity, AMC Connector will be a great asset to ABB. She is well equipped to install long, heavy subsea power cables,” says Svein Haug, president of Aker Marine Contractors, who will operate the vessel.

“The vessel will also have unique wave motion characteristics which will provide increased project execution predictability in areas such as the Barents Sea, where we often encounter rough seas,” adds Haug.

AMC Connector’s design enables her to operate safely and efficiently in significantly higher waves than most other high-end construction vessels. AMC Connector will comfortably operate in significant wave height (Hsig) of 4-5 metres, which means that she will have an operating window at the leading edge for installation and construction vessels.

Aker Marine Contractors will also provide and install a permanent tether anchor for the subsea power cable.

Contract value for management and execution of the project is approximately NOK 70 million.  This excludes vessel costs, which are covered under the charter agreement signed between Aker Marine Contractors and ABB in March 2010. The installation job will be performed in the second quarter of 2013.  Aker Solutions’ contract party is Aker Marine Contractors AS.

AMC Connector is currently being built by STX Europe and will be outfitted at their yard at Søviknes, Norway. She will be ready for operations from Q1 2012.

The vessel will be owned 50/50 by Aker Solutions and Singapore-based Ezra Holdings Ltd (Ezra), which recently acquired 100 percent of the shares in Aker Solutions’ subsidiary Aker Marine Contractors AS. As part of the agreement, Aker Solutions becomes a substantial shareholder in Ezra. The transaction is expected to be completed during Q1 2011.

By becoming part of Ezra, Aker Marine Contractors will have access to a larger and rapidly growing fleet of installation vessels covering all IMR and SURF installation segments – including flexible and rigid pipelay with capacity up to 3 500 metres water depth – which will enable Ezra/Aker Marine Contractors to compete with the world’s leading SURF contractors.

Ezra operates in the offshore market under the EMAS brand name. EMAS is an integrated offshore support solutions provider for the oil and gas industry. The business was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Singapore.

(Pictured: AMC Connector courtesy of Aker Solutions)

2010 Submarine Cable Map

TeleGeography’s popular Submarine Cable Map has been fully updated for 2010. The latest edition of our map depicts 111 of the world’s major submarine cable systems and 19 planned systems that are due to enter service by 2011. www.telegeography.com

Click map for high-resolution

This was brought to our attention by digg.com, the social networking site that allows its users to submit links and news stories and then list the stories by how many times they were voted on or “dugg”.  The particular link was “dugg” 4300 times, making it one of the top links in the last two weeks.

The map is provided by atlantic-cable.com – History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network.

Now here is a map updated for 2009 provided by telegeography.com.

Click map for high-resolution

A French team of engineers on board the cable repair ship Raymond Croze have begun to repair the underwater cables that were severed late last week in the Mediterranean.  The incident is causing major internet and communication problems for the Middle East and much of India. It is now believed that the lines were cut by European fishermen who were trawling nets off the coast of Sicily.

The cables – Sea Me We 4 (SMW 4), Sea Me We 3 (SMW 3) and FLAG EA – run under the sea between Egypt and Italy and carry 90% of all data between Europe and the Middle East.

Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India, says, “The cables are expected to be down till the end of the month. One of the two maintenance boats in the Mediterranean, the Raymond Croze, a France Telecom marine cable ship, will reach the location on December 21.”

According to a France Telecom report, while Maldives is 100% down, there has been an 82% disruption in India. Among other countries affected are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar and Zambia.

The Times of India

Cable Repair Ship: CS Raymond Croz

Over the past year and a half gCaptain has reported on a number of stories about undersea cables. Click here for the Tag Page

Now here is a map of all undersea cables provided by tatacommunications.com

Headlines

Mail Online: Robot sent to seabed to repair broken cables after internet is knocked out in Middle East

BBC News: Repairs begin on undersea cable

cellular-news.com: Repair Ship to Start Work on Severed Undersea Cables Next Week

.Telegeography.com is selling one of the most interesting world maps I’ve seen to date. The map depicts the over 120 subsea cables including detailed information on the major systems. You can get the free desktop wallpaper or purchase a poster version by clicking HERE.

Hit hard by the internet crash in 2000 cable laying ships (video) were hard pressed to find contracts laying subsea communication cable and took on less traditional projects like oceanographic research (see video below).

With eight long years behind us and the internet seeing a rebirth in what is called Web 2.0, the impressive cable laying ships are back in business. The SMH writes:

It grabbed the attention of wave riders this morning, but surfers of the web are likely to benefit most from a large ship moored near Sydney’s eastern suburbs beaches.

French vessel Ile De Sein was moored off Tamarama Beach this morning, as part of a project to lay 9000 kilometres of submarine cable between Sydney and Hawaii.

The cable, being laid by telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent in partnership with Telstra, aims to boost the internet capacity between Australia and the US.

“The explosion of user-generated online content means we need more capacity than ever before with the United States, which is already the destination for two-thirds of all Australian traffic on the internet,” Telstra Wholesale’s Kate McKenzie said.

The cable is expected to be active by the end of the year.

The presence of the large ship so close to shore brought back memories of the Pasha Bulker, the bulk carrier that ran aground on Nobbys Beach, Newcastle, following a storm last year.

But a police spokesman said Ile De Sein had not issued any distress calls this morning. Continue Reading…

Watch The Video

CNET has put together an interesting slideshow detailing the operation. We encourage you to view the entire show which can be found HERE but the following are some highlights:

The Ile de Sein is a massive ship that sports a crew of 60, who work in shifts to lay cable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is the fiber-optic cable that gets run under the sea–separated into different layers. The functional part of the cable is only 17 millimeters thick. This is coated in a flexible white plastic, which forms the outer layer.

This is the cable spool, in which the massive amounts of undersea cable necessary to make the Sydney-Hawaii connection are stored. It’s 7 meters deep and about 15 meters in diameter. All the cable is laid in the spool by hand.

This is the machine that runs the cable out to sea. In particularly deep oceans, the cable may not touch the ocean floor until it is 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) behind the ship or more. It is thus important to carefully monitor the stresses on the cable.

This is were the rubber meets the road, the hydraulic arm that lays the cable off the ship’s stern

Be sure to check out the entire slideshow with photography by Alex Serpo starting HERE

Video courtesy of Diesel Duck

We received email that our last quiz was just too easy so we challenge you to try this…. the above picture shows something carried aboard certain ships that’s critical to the future success of this website. What is it?

Hint: It’s being covered today in the newspapers of our 4th and 5th favorite cities.

Update

You can find the answer on our post: Cable Laying Ships – Back In Business

Submarine cables world map. Click

Sea-Fever‘s Peter Mello submitted the following story to our Maritime News Discoverer;

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority. “People who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do,” said ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur. Continue Reading At The Guardian…

Chart Of The Cable

Graph Of Affected Areas

(Source: Renesys)

UPDATE: 2nd Cable Reported Cut

The BBC Tells Us:

The first cable – the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) – was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.

INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE 1 Polyethylene cover 2,4 Stranded steel armour wires 3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn 6 Polycarbonate insulator 7 Copper sheath 8 Protective core 9 Optical fibres Not to scale

A second cable thought to lie alongside it – SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable – was also split.

FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.

The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Continue Reading…

Related Links:

• Study on Subsea Cable Cuts
  
• Live Internet Status Report
• How To Fix An Undersea Cable

UPDATE 2:

The AP is reporting: Ships did not cut internet cable