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

"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'll lunge for a cable that's 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 semisoft cables."

Nearly 600 subsea fiber-optic cables carry almost all intercontinental internet traffic. Engineers began removing the first transoceanic fiber-optic cable, TAT-8, as it neared retirement. Sharks rarely damage cables; they might gum suspended lines or lunge during haul-outs, but actual bites require baiting the cable with fish. Rodent chewing poses a real land-based threat because incisors grow continuously. Offshore crews, engineers, and maintenance workers manage and repair the physical network. Popular myths about shark attacks or sabotage obscure the human labor and technical work that keep global undersea internet infrastructure functioning.

Read at WIRED