wait it's an actual picture? lmao

I love that that article starts with “The internet is a series of tubes.”

They should partner with Nintendo and get whatever they coat their Switch game carts with.

Mostly non Russian fishing trawlers, but don't let that get in the way of a good old fashioned moral panic.

It's true that a shark isn't actually going to sever all the way through an optical cable to the point that it's going to cause the cable to fail by itself. That isn't the problem they're talking about through. The problem is they can definitely impact the lifecycle of these cables. Saltwater is an incredibly difficult environment to engineer for which is why these cables are built to be so durable. The issue with sharks is even if they can't get all the way through a cable, they can shred the outer layer of a cable allowing salt water to get in contact with the steel cables which can quickly cause rust and degradation. That is why you see multiple layers of steel cable sleeves. The projects cost a fuck ton of money so the people that do them do cost benefit analysis to figure out how much it costs and how long they will be able to use it to decide if it's worth it. If you figure you're going to get 50 years out of your cables but then some fucking shark you didn't plan for comes by and takes 10 years off that expectation, it's going to impact your bottom line.

Anyone that has worked with optic fiber cables before can tell you, it's possible to break the fiber in the middle just by bending it a tiny bit too much. A shark violently shaking it could potentially break it even if it's teeth never broke the outer plastic layer.

Thank you