Researchers have detected earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time using a subsea telecommunications cable.
The Southern Cross Next seafloor cable, which connects New Zealand to Australia, was converted into an array of sensors for earthquakes and ocean currents. The technique uses the optical fibre inside the cable as the sensing element and gathers environmental data from the seabed, where no other permanent sensors exist.
Measurements only started in October, but the team has already recorded more than 50 earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean even when the epicentre was tens to hundreds of kilometres from the cable.
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) team says the high rate of detection could “drastically accelerate” the research and the refinement of the technique, which was previously tested in the less seismically active Atlantic Ocean.
Measurements will be collected until the end of this year, after which it is hoped the technology could be adapted to develop a worldwide...