Underwater Cables facts

While investigating facts about Underwater Cables, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Google makes use of a Kevlar-like layer to protect its underwater internet cables from shark bites.

A suspension bridge is suspended by cables hung from towers. The towers are deeply rooted into the ground or underwater floor by caissons or cofferdams.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 14 of the best facts about Underwater Cables I managed to collect.

1. The USN has a special facility in WA that degausses (de-magnetize) its ships and subs with extremely powerful DC currents. This significantly reduces the boat's detectabilty by underwater sensing cables, protects it from magnetically-triggered mines, and allows its compass to function (see PIC).

2. The Congo Canyon has the strongest known turbidity currents in the world. These currents, which are essentially underwater avalanches, occur when sediment-rich waters flow rapidly down the canyon walls at speeds of up to 3.5 meters/second, and have been known to destroy telegraph cables.

3. The U.S. government launched millions of small copper antennas into space in 1963 to prevent international communication being stopped by the soviets cutting underwater communications cables

4. In 1985 AT&T discovered that sharks would attack underwater fiber optic cables because they were attracted to the electromagnetic radiation they emitted.

5. There are around 380 underwater cables driving the modern internet in operation around the world, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers (745,645 miles).

6. Underwater cables connect the internet and the technology for doing it began in the 1830s

7. There are hundreds of thousands of kilometers of telecommunications cables run underwater between continents

8. Thin underwater cables that are responsible for 99% of all data traffic and the internet.

9. The internet "cloud" is primarily underwater as there are thousands of miles of sub-ocean trenches dug with fiber optic cables connecting the world.

10. Internet travels overseas via 750,000 miles of underwater cables

What is true about underwater cables?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

99% of transoceanic data traffic (internet, phone and text) are sent through underwater sea cables across the ocean. These underwater cables can transmit data at 10 terabits per second, 8x faster than satellite.

Operation Ivy Bells, the US tapping of an underwater Russian communication cable during the Cold War. - source