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> The locations of pretty much every cable laid in the last half century is very precisely tracked and one of the first things that has to happen when preparing
by toast0 2y ago
> The locations of pretty much every cable laid in the last half century is very precisely tracked and one of the first things that has to happen when preparing a new cable route is to undertake a high resolution side-scan sonar survey of all or part of the planned route.
When the cables aren't well buried, they can migrate. No link, but earlier today I saw a description of a repair that was significantly delayed because the cable ends were 15 km away from where they were expected to be.
That said, I think there's a lot of area on the sea, and not a lot of cables, so chances of overlapping are low; especially if a survey is done of the new route immediately before. Although if they're buried, maybe you can't see them so well. And a little overlap here and there probably isn't a big deal, because most of the time cables are brought up, it's because they were severed, so likely it doesn't disturb the other cable too much on its way up.
- lxgr 2y agoOverlapping is guaranteed in at least every case where a new cable has a more southern/western terminal on one but a more northern/eastern terminal on the other continent as an existing one. No idea if specific care is taken to avoid that, or if it's even a problem, but I could imagine so for cables that are buried in the seabed – the act of burying the new one could damage the existing one. But cables are only buried in shallow waters, is my understanding (where there's high risk of an anchor destroying them), so as long as the point of overlap or intersection is in deep seas, I'd imagine it to not be a problem.
- dguest 2y agoYeah it's a 2d geometry, of course some of the cables will cross. The other reason that overlapping would be an issue is if they need to pull up a section to repair it and it's directly under another cable. But the ocean is really damn big and there are only O(100s) of submarine cables. In both the burying in shallow water case, and the deep water maintenance case, I'm guessing the chances of two cables being in the same place is very very small.
- RoderickBeck 2y agoI think that cable was SWM5. It ended up 15 kilometers from the original burial trench. This is why deep burial is recommended, but adds expense.