OCEANOGRAPHERS are in imminent danger of losing billions of dollars鈥� worth of transatlantic telephone cables that could support valuable undersea science. While the American owners are happy to hand over the cables, which are being retired, European partners are unsure how to transfer the legalities that come with the lines. They plan to pull up parts of the cables unless they receive detailed plans from scientists soon.
鈥淚t鈥檚 insane. It鈥檚 an extraordinary resource,鈥� says geophysicist Rhett Butler, director of Incorporated Research Institutions of Seismology (IRIS), who is campaigning for scientists to come up with proposals. There are four Atlantic fibre-optic cables at stake, snaking along the ocean floor from New Jersey and Rhode Island to Britain, France and Germany (see Graphic). Laid down in the early 1990s by US telecoms company AT&T together with about 30 European companies, the cables were built to last 25 years. They are being retired early because new-generation cables are up to 100 times faster.
However, the cables could still transmit power and data for anything from underwater seismometers to chemical sensors and cameras. 鈥淥nce you get yourself a phone box on the sea floor you can plug in what you want,鈥� says Butler. A constant stream of data from the seabed would be a bonanza for ocean scientists, who usually rely on equipment connected to ships. The Atlantic hosts several poorly understood ecosystems, including underwater mud volcanoes and deep, cold-water corals. There is also huge interest in the mid-Atlantic ridge, where new ocean floor is created from the Earth鈥檚 innards.
Advertisement
AT&T has previously donated sections of old coaxial cable in the Pacific, and scientists used these to install the world鈥檚 only permanent deep-sea seismometers, one midway between Hawaii and California, and one off the coast of Japan. But European companies haven鈥檛 donated cables before, and it looks to be a tricky proposition. Unlike their American and Japanese counterparts, European phone companies rip up old cables from territorial waters when they are no longer in use. That prevents the sea floor from getting cluttered, and saves the companies from having to compensate for any damage the cables might cause 鈥� fishermen snagging their nets, for example.
If scientists would take that liability on, 鈥渨e鈥檇 fall over ourselves to say yes鈥�, says David Robinson, a subsea business manager for British Telecom. But no one knows quite how to arrange that. Neither scientists nor funding organisations are used to dealing with such legalities or working at the breakneck speeds set by industry. 鈥淭here isn鈥檛 a body ready and able to take these [cables] over,鈥� says Monty Priede, head of the European Sea Floor Observatory Network (ESONET), which aims to set up the first undersea environmental monitoring system in the Atlantic.
Priede plans to approach the European Commission to try to broker a deal, but time is short. The first cables are due to be removed by the end of the year, and once lifted they will each be chopped up and shipped to landfill sites.
