Sensing on Fiber Optic Submarine Cables – Opportunities within Polar Connect

Recent technological advancements enable the use of fiber optic submarine cables as sustainable environmental research infrastructure complementing the existing ENVRI community with a deep ocean component. Submarine communication cables can cover large distances across remote areas, making them ideal platforms to collect environmental and scientific data from the deep ocean. Here, we will show how present and future fiber optic sensing technologies (such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing DAS across repeaters, SMART repeaters, and quantum sensing) can facilitate multidisciplinary research by opening a multitude of novel environmental monitoring and research opportunities in the fields of oceanography, geophysics, marine biology, and climate studies. Fiber optic sensing can for instance improve early warning systems for natural hazards, provide oceanographic data on ocean currents, water properties, and ocean turbulence to feed numerical climate and weather models, and serve as a tool for marine mammal tracking.  

On the example of Polar Connect, we will present the status and development of a future integrated infrastructure in the Arctic Ocean. Polar Connect is an international cooperation with the goal of building a submarine communication cable system between Northern Europe and East Asia – on the shortest possible path across the Arctic Ocean. Utilising technological advancements, Polar Connect will in a collaborative effort enable the sustainable collection of year-around, long-term, real-time environmental data in the Central Arctic Ocean. An important part of Polar Connect is to ensure data management of the collected environmental data, utilising standardised formats, and FAIR data principles while providing the needed security and restrictions. Please contact us to contribute to shaping future sensing on Polar Connect. The Polar Connect developments are co-funded by the European Union through the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF2 Digital) funded projects ‘North Pole Fiber’ (22-EU-DIG-NPF) and ‘Polar Connect Step 1’ (23-EU-DIG-PC1).