Recovering and Recycling Old Submarine Cables

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I'm Roman Mars. and I'm here with ninety nine PI producer and reporter Christopher Johnson. Hey Chropher. Hey, Roman. So I am in New York City, as you know. and of course, you are in California And we're connected over Zoom. We are. It's good to see you. It's always good to see you. And you're coming in crystal clear, which is great. And this is especially amazing Considering that my voice and my face are traveling all the way across the continent to you through Wires Roman. Infrastructure. loveo it. And that infrastructure uses fiber optics. How familiar are you with fiber optics, Roman? Well, I think I know the basics. It's light carrying information down glass fibers. I think I can yeah, I can picture it Excellent, excellent. That's exactly right. So at its simplest, fiber optics involves basically translating information like our conversation right now. into pulses of light And that light zips down those long glass fibers that are finer than strands of hair And then that light is turned back into information on the other side. And this is what carries most of our internet A lot of people might think that our information moves through the air. doesn't That's interesting. because I mean, it's easy to have this misconception because you know, like even the way we talk about the internet, we talk about the cloud and Wifi. like it makes it feel like it's bouncing around in the sky totally. But in fact, the interternet depends on a massive amount of physical fiber optics cables that are crisscrossing the globe Some of those lines are on land There are also one and half million kilometers R andars of fiber optics cables stretched across the bottom of entire oceans, carrying our Zoom calls and our TikToks and our ship posts all over the world about ninety five percent or so of intercontinental traffic goes via submarine telecommunications cables. So our conversation is definitely going through cables This is Jane Rafino. She's a researcher studying global subsea cables No matter how wireless your device is and no matter how wireless you think your connection is, there is always a wire somewhere Now nearly all of the data moving around the planet, this second Roment is traveling across the bottom of an ocean somewhere And the reason I'm telling you all of this is because There's about a million miles of these submarine fiber optic cables in use today, and they all owe their existence to the one The one cable, the first, the original, the OG cable that started it all. Okay, tell me about the OG cable. It's known as the Transatlantic Telephone Fiber Optic sububmarine Cable eight, or TAT eight It was the first ever fiber optic cable to cross an entire ocean. And it really proved what fiber was capable of And Tat eight has been on an adventure So I want to tell you how Tat eight came to be And how it was this huge part of a telecommunications revolution and how it paved the way for the internet that we have today. Sounds great. Let's do it. Okay, so first, just a little bit of quick background Fiber optic technology did not start out as a way of communicating. Actually, at first, it was basically just this Victorian era novelty. I mean, it was essentially like a Victorian party trick. They started to use fiber to transmit light, but it was more for like, you know, a decorative garden or a party trick They start of had this technology and they weren't quite sure to do with it And then into the late nineteenth century, you see fiber optics getting used in medicine like doctors are using illuminated glass to light up bodies during surgery. But it really took until the second half of the twentieth century for people to see the potential of fiber optics and telecommunications And then in the mid to late seventies, you really start to see the first fiber optic telephone lines. And so what had they been using as telephone cables like up to this point Basically copper So In the nineteen sixties, phone cables were still copper based. And that was a problem when it came to long distance submarine cables that connected, say, like the US and Europe Just because those cables couldn't carry a lot of calls before the lines started to sound basically like shit or it just became too busy for more phone traffic. Yeah ye. I mean, when I was very little, I do remember especially long distance calls. They sounded long distance. likeike you felt the physicality and the limits of the physicality of the wires. but we were just kind of used to it. Like that that was just our lives. abbsolutely And Fiber Optics offered an alternative to that. A fiber optic line could theoretically carry way more calls more quickly with way less static retty good, right? Yeah, Big improvement. Yeah. And so Very gradually, these old copper cables were getting replaced with the new fiber optics technology. And not just phone lines. AT and T did the first ever live fiber optics TV transmission broadcast the Winter Olympics in nineteen eighty from Lake Placid. And then they made this little promo film to brag about it The latest communications technology was applied in transforming Lake Placid into a global communications control center. The potential of lightwave technology inspires predictions of space age home information and entertainment centers in the near future. Clearly, when you have ads about your backbone technology that nobody can really experience, they're like putting all their chips in on fiber optics, right? This is the moment where the fiber optics revolution is about to happen I mean, the new technology was impressive There were also big limitations. Fiber optic lines were still only available in a few places and for relatively short distances. And all of it is terrestrial. All these fiber optics lines are on land. So it's still pretty limited alsoso this other thing that had been lurking since even before fiber optics, that's kind of threatening to squash the technology before it really even took off. Oh no Who's this villain? Satellites rooman Mars. Satellites. So as soon as satellite technology developed, as soon as they started to put satellites for communication in space A lot of these cable and telephone companies said, you know, well, we're cooked. everythingverything's going to be satellites These are the last cables. We're going to go straight from telegraph cables to obbsolescence time satellite technology was becoming more and more of a thing. There were already some communication satellites in use. And so when it came to global telecommunications, the assumption was that satellites were the future and that they would be the thing fully replaced those old copper cables. And so why is that? Well, for one, satellites are in space.. This was the tail end of the space race and we were still pretty obsessed with the final frontier. so Beaming phone calls to and from a satellite hovering above the Eth. How cool, man, like that was the future. Not moving stuff through boring dusty ass copper cables. Yeah ye. Satellites were a genuine competitor because they could carry voice traffic a lot more cheaply. because cables are incredibly expensive to build And on top of all of that Satellite telecommunication was just simpler, at least on a diplomatic level Th these cables that go between countries had to be built with consonsortia. So Janies from different countries had to collaborate with each other. and with a satellite An American company could just do it But satellites The US could build and operate its own equipment with pretty much complete autonomy which the US government preferred. Yeah. Well I would prefer that too, ye. Yeah. If you've ever been part of an HOA, you would prefer this too. Yeah, I get that. And so, despite all of its promise, it wasn't a given that fiber optics would be the future for big long distance telecommunications But Fiber did have one very big champion AT andT was at the front of the fiber optics evolution Mostly because they were the experts on long distance telecom cables. They've been laying subsea cables all over the planet for nearly like a hundred years They had all the know how, they had all of the equipment, they were deep on cables. And so as satellites were kind of threatening cables Researchers at Bell Labs, which was a part of AT and T They went hard on developing fiber optics. They teamed up with telecom companies in the UK and in France, and they formed this consortium And then they came up with this plan. They said, Hey y'all, let's build a massive submarine fiber optic cable and run it from the east coast of the US all the way over to Western Europe This would be the first ever fiber cable to cross a whole ocean. Super ambitious There's a big difference between doing it on land and doing it at sea across almost four thousand miles. And the idea that you would innovate with something that goes into the sea was not obvious. This was really untested Okay, so the researchers and scientists, they're going to make this leap. that they want to prove, they need to prove that fiber optics cables are better than satellines. And so they start building this cable that's kind of never been done before, like an undersea fiber optic cables. They've done copper wires across the Atlantic, but never fiber optics. So how are they going to go about doing that I mean, basically they just pulled out all the stops In the early nineteen eighties, they started doing all of these stress tests around the world They dropped some simulation cables into the North Atlantic to see how things like temperature and pressure change affected signal transmission too see if laying and recovering the cable caused any breaks in the fiber. prettyretty fundamental stuff They also built a thing that's called the Ocean simulation facility to see if deep sea conditions mess with the cable's ability to transmit light across all that distance And that was at the Belle Labs Homeedell complex, which by the way, is where they now film Severance. Oh, cool. Yeah. And so things are going pretty well for Belle Labs until During one of their tests, they discovered breaks in the cable's electrical signal, and this was maybe something that could derail the entire project And that is where We get to the famous story that the susea cabled industry gets very They get very they get very nervous when you mention the S word and that is sharks. Oh man, Yp, sharks are coming. According to Jane, one of the lead researchers at Bell Labs had the shark teeth that had been pulled from the glitchy cable. like literal shark teeth Romin Mars. That's amazing I mean, can you imagine you've been running all these tests and Hither and yawn over the planet to test this thing out. You got simulations going to make sure that this first ever subsea cable will be completely foolproof. You've got to get it right. D test for temperature, pressure, tension. Don't A H cubs. Don't jaws. D' don. I mean, sharks were really the thing back then, if you remember, I could barely go into an actual pool in the backyard because of jaws. But were sharks like a real problem that seems like even if I don't know, an occasional shark bit, an occasional cable Is this a real problem I mean, in terms of finding actual teeth in the cable Okay, I strugg. There are competing stories, shall we say around this In terms of the faults in the cable, Jane says that those were probably abrasions from the sea flloor Bye with the stress and the high stakes and they don't want to take any chances with this thing The engineers and researchers start doing all of these kind of hilariously thorough tests to figure out how to sharkpof this cable For example They go to aquariums in Connecticut and in Florida and they put these cables into the shark tanks and they dangle them likeike a toy right in the sharks' faces And really the only way that they could get the sharks to go anywhere near the cables as, you know they wrapped it in fish. So basically like, oh, my dog needs to take a pill, I'm going to hide it in some cheese And there was just like there was no correlation. there was no pattern There's no evidence that sharks are particularly attracted to the cables I mean, what I love about this is that this is a scientific test that a third grader would devise. It's so understandable. It's so great. I love it And the good thing about all of these tests is that they made engineers add these extra layers of protection and insulation to the cable which, in nineteen eighty six, they started to lay across the floor of the Atlantic I mean, in some places They're dropping the cable to more than twenty six thousand feet down AT andT actually ran this pretty cool TV ad that showed their crews at sea unspooling the cable. and dropping it off the ships. But today, we're no longer just a phone company just a telephone network And the whole time, the voiceover is just flexing about how this one new fiber optic cable was such an incredible leap in global communications. Supported by a worldwide intelligent network that will someday make it possible for people anywhere at any time be able to send or receive formation The cable ran from England and France across to a town called Tuckerton on the Jersey shore, not too far from Atlantic City By the way, there's even a plaque there now, and it marks the US terminal for the Tratlantic teelephone fiber optics sububmarine cable eight, AKA TA eight. Wait, why eight? Well, because there were already seven transatlantic cables But they were all copper based. Okay. Got it. So then in december nineteen eighty eight They finally switched on this new first of its kind state of the art cable And It worked And AT and T decides to get Isaac Asimov to launch the cable to kind of make the first call. So they have a video call between Paris, London, and New York. And Isaac Asimov sends the first message and he talks about, you know, welcome everyone to this maiden voyage on a beam of light. I mean it's really beautiful opening statement. I love it. I love that they always had this notion of the science fiction nature of their science. You know what I mean? Like having someone like Isaac Asazimov like on the ready for these things just added some gndeur to all this stuff. Yeah. Okay, so they lay it down and they they introduce it with all this pomp and circumstance. And yeah, Isaac Ismoff there with his mutton chops and everything. I mean, you know, but then in the end, did Ted end up truly revolutionizing telecommunications. Oh, it absolutely did. I mean, first of all, it was a quantum leap in capacity. TAT eight could carry forty thousand phone calls at once. That's ten times the capacity of its predecessor, which was a copper base cable And then there's the whole cable versus satellite debate. But when Tat eight was switched on The superiority of subse fiber optics became very clear. How so? Satellites had this pernicious problem with latency, where the time it took for a signal to go up into space and come back down it caused delays. Now, they were tiny, but they were enough to drive you absolutely nuts And signal quality was only kinda so so But with Tat A Things were immediately so much better and TAT eight proved that submarine fiber cables could actually be cheaper to make, to install, to fix, Data was way more secure, and Fiber's bandwidth was way higher And also, Tad eight was coming into use just as the worldwide web was taking off So it was also perfectly positioned to fill the immediate demand for infrastructure that could move all this information all over the world quickly. So Tat eight showed the world of international telecom that a long distance subse fiber optics cable could really basically crush it. In fact, it worked so well. Engineers at the time were positive that this would be the first and the last cable like this that they would ever have to install When it was launched There was this belief that this is going to be so much capacity. We're not going to need anything else ever. I swear I'll never ask for any more capacity. And it was full within eighteen months because of course, you know, just like when you build a highway, it increases traffic, you build a cable and it increases traffic So it's full to capacity within eighteen months, which You know, it's not a huge problem because more cables come after it. So once TATA proved the concept of international submarine lines The FCC invested more and more in fiber optics cables, And so by the nineteen nineties, the capacity of fiber optics overtook satellites and it just kept growing from there to the point that today, we are completely reliant on this technology with hundreds and hundreds of those sprawling subsea cables that are eneshing the planet right now. I mean this It's really amazing to think about it and to picture it. But I do want to go back to the satellightes for a second because They obviously didn't go away. So if most of the global interternet's infrastructure is fiber optic cables, Where do the satellites actually fit into that? Today, satellites only carry a teensy amount of global internet traffic. But they are still a huge part of our internet ecosystem And this is especially true for remote, low connectivity places that don't have their own fiber optics lines yet. or where maybe there's only one cable and it could be wiped out by a natural disaster, say. And in places like that, satellites are a lifeline for connection and for redundancy. But when it comes to total data capacity, it's not even close. Today, fiber optics are the way of the world. Well, this brings up another question for me, because You know, who owns all these subsea cables that we're reliant on that crisscross the globe and circle it and send all the traffic around? I mean, you know that one Tat eight was a consortium of, you know the US and AT and D and France and stuff like this. Are there still like cooperative international consortia to make everything else happen Mostly no there are still some cables that are built or owned like that But most submarine cables today, it won't surprise you are in private hands For example, a small handful of companies install most of the world's subsea cables And when it comes to ownership, the usual suspects, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon together They either own or they lease half of all the bandwidth across the world subsea cables And now, thanks to AI, we are in the middle of a subsea cable boom. All of these tech giants need wires that connect all those data centers around the world. And so they're investing more and more in subsea cables. So for example, there's a project underway right now to build what will be the world's single longest submarine cable connecting five continents Now, as for tat eight Even though it revolutionized global telecom and it played this huge role in the birth of the internet Tat eight won't be part of this AI explosion Why? We'll talk about that after the break Consider the impact of thoughtful design on your life Beauty can capture your imagination How I can guide you Empower you and enrich everything you do When you get behind the wheel of a Bick, the power of purposeful design is felt in every detail From the sculptural presence and elegant finishes of the Buick and Vista to the intuitive technology and spacious sophistication of the Buick Enclave. Every Buick vehicle leads to more dynamic drives, more captivating discoveries, and more rewarding moments every day Visit Buick d. com to discover luxury that can be yours right now. That's Bick dot com Bk. 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Squarespace makes it easy to share your work, book clients, and get paid with built in tools for scheduling, invoicing, and email all in one place I've had a squarespace site Roman Mars. com for twelve years or so And the key for me isn't that it was easy to build, although it was, is that it's easy to maintain. It never gives me any trouble at all. It's great Head to squarespace d. com slash invvisible for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code invisible to save ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside of you that you are meant for more? That's your own drive pushing you towards what's next. Capeella University gets that With their FlexPath learearning format, you can set the pace and earn your degree without putting life on pause. You've built experience and you know what you're capable of Now it's your time to turn that momentum into more. The real question is Can't you do Learn more at Cpella. edu Okay, Roman, we are back. We are back And now I think it's time to have maybe a little retirement party for TAat eight. Retirement. o. Because for as much as TAT eight revolutionized telecommunication, The cable itself didn't actually work for all that long It was switched on in nineteen eighty eight and it stopped working in two thousand two. What fourteen years later, I know. Wow. Okay, RIPat eight. Yeah. was it was just sitting there. It's carcass just been sitting there dead. Yeah, it's just been sitting there chilling at the bottom of the Atlantic And now almost forty years after it was installed Tat eight is finally being pulled out. So why are they bothering to pull it up now? like forty years later? Like whats it's been there so long. Wh whyy not just leave it Well, ordinarily, that's exactly what they'd do. They would just leave the cables down there. Yeah. They don't wantna mess with the seabed and recovery can be expensive and it's labor intensive. And there's sharks down there. There are sharks down there. But now there are so many cables running along the bottom of our oceans and seas and As vast as those oceans and seas are There are actually limited ideal routes that we can run when you account for protected areas, military areas. So there's all this competition for seabed use, which means that now to make room, they've got to start pulling up some of those old lines like Tat Aid Also, The TAT eight cable is made of all these pretty valuable components and those parts are getting stripped and recycled. That makes sense. That makes sense. So what is this process like? It sounds incredibly hard I am so glad you asked because this is probably my favorite part of this story I mean, I think it is just so, so cool how they do this, partly because Even though our internet is based on this incredibly fast, efficient technology, It still takes so much labor and human hands to deal with this infrastructure from installing it to maintaining it and now recovering it And I talked to Jane about this because she actually met some of the crew of a recovery ship The ship itself can carry a crew of fourteen people. There's a captain, there are the coilers, there are a standard ship's engineer and they come from. all around the world And they go out to sea for two to two and a half months at a time So they basically go out, they collect a section of Tat eight cable. And they bring it back. they offload it, they resupply the ship, they get more coffee and snacks, maybe get some rest And then they head back out to pick up where they left off They use a set of coordinates to find and pick up the cable where they left off They get out to where they generally think that the cable is based off this data And then they take this flat They call it a flatfish which is attached to a long Long rope And they throw it into the water to around where they think they can snag the cable There are some sections that are really deep, so like three miles threeree miles, even just like A three mile long rope is actually quite difficult to imagine because you can't see it all. And they're trying to catch a cable that is how big? The deep sea portion of TAat eight at least, is exactly the diameter of like a candle that you would stick in a candlestick on your table. And I know that because I keep my TAat eight samples in an IKA candlestick in my office I was not picturing something the width of a candle. I was picturing like maybe like sort of a arm length diamer. Like if you put your arms in a circle, I thought that was the cable we're talking about. So how do they hook it? How do they get it on board? I don't even understand So they throw the hook off the ship And then they slowly drag the hook across the bottom of the sea until like a like you're fishing. Yeah They get a bite. They get a snag And then they start winching the cable into one of the ship's cable tanks where there are these guys called coilers waiting to get to work. And at sea, it's part of their job to stand in the tank and Grab the cable as it comes through the hatch and they walk backwards in slow circles to coil the cable And this is all just so fascinating to me because