We have known, if not explored ourselves, that internet can alone connect us with the rest of the world, and at times with the universe — courtesy space exploration data systems – but, it is perhaps for the first time ‘rest of the world’ has been rightly coined, with the sea floor-connectivity completing the claim.
Great news for ocean explorers and sea-life lovers — scientists are up with arms to explore the ocean floors by connecting them to the Internet!
The U.S. and Canada have joined hands for laying down submarine fiber-optic cables in the Pacific Ocean, creating the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory.
The Canadian section of the observatory – NEPTUNE Canada — will be built off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Using fiber-optic cables, it will be connecting hundreds of oceanographic instruments to the Internet by transmitting more data at a faster pace, compared to other technologies.
The fiber-optic cable is 500-mile (800-kilometer) long, encircling the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, which is sliding under the western side of the North American plate.
Using instruments like underwater microphones, nutrient levels-monitoring sensors including various video cameras, wave sensors and seismometers, experts will now be able to see what’s going on in the oceans, which otherwise remained very limited for decades – This is definitely an important venture with seas covering two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.
