The Quintillion Cable: Lessons For the EU's Arctic Cable Aspirations - II

The illustration on top shows the Arctic cable's main predator: icebergs. In waters 500 meters or less deep, floating icebergs carve grooves in the seabed floor. These scars are typically one to two meters deep with the record being 15 meters. A fair number of grooves are carved 5 to 8.5 meters into the floor. Known as ice scouring, icebergs have left marks in water as deep as a thousand meters. These comments apply to both the North Pole and the Antarctic. Cables connecting either region to the rest of the world face this challenge.

According to a US Government Geological survey, Canada's Beaufort Sea, highlighted in blue, has at least 2,200 ice scouring marks on its sea floor. Quintillion's cable extends into this region. Any cable linking Europe to Asia via the Arctic must go through the Bering Sea. Geological surveys have shown that ice scouring happens every year in the Bering Sea as wind and currents drive ice floes across waters as shallow as 20 meters. Although the average depth in the Bering Sea is 1,500 meters, the continental shelf along Alaska's coast is less than 200 meters. This is the danger zone for cables. It is worth remembering that the water near shore is so shallow that during the last Ice Age Alaska and Siberia were connected by a land bridge nearly 1,000 US miles or 1,600 kilometers wide.

While most ice scouring happens to the North of the Bering Strait, it is no great consolation. As the chart shows, the Bering Sea is extremely shallow above the Strait as well. If the EU wants to thread a cable through this region to reach Japan, then the analysis must assume periodic outages due to ice scouring. It should also assume anchor dragging incidents because the Arctic summer is growing longer and hence more ship traffic using the Arctic as a shorter path between Europe and Asia.

Illustration Showing An Iceberg Carving A Groove In the Sea Floor - Known As Ice Scouring

Map Highlighting Canada's Beaufort Sea

Map of Bering Strait Region Showing Sea Depth


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