Recently, the undersea cable industry made a major step
forward in providing more accurate and reliable data to depict the locations of
active or “in-service” cables for the purposes of ocean planning. The North American Submarine Cable
Association (NASCA), whose membership includes telecom giants such as Verizon,
Sprint and AT&T, worked with NOAA to share a comprehensive database of
cable locations (known as “route position lines”) owned by NASCA members on the
Marine Cadastre website.
The new NASCA data identifies “in-service” versus
“out-of-service” cables and includes the cable name and owner information. It is important to note that NASCA members
include the majority ― but not all ― of private operators of submarine cables,
so a small number of submarine cables in the Mid-Atlantic are not represented
in these data.
Within the context of ocean planning, the submarine cable industry is interested in developing minimum buffers between cables and other uses like fishing, anchoring and dredging. However, at this point, their main goal is to continue operating business as usual, Wargo said.
"The goal is for us to be able to do what we’ve done for 100 years or more," he said. "The Portal can show other industries where we are. Hopefully they can plan to avoid us early in the process rather than us needing to react when a project is sited directly over a cable landing or impinges upon some other part of the cable off shore."
The NASCA submarine cable data will make accounting for this
vital infrastructure possible in all ocean planning efforts going forward.