Telecommunications giant Bell is exploring surveillance options in the Gulf of St. Lawrence after one of its subsea fibre optic cables between Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland’s west coast was recently severed for the second time.
David Joice, the company’s director of networks, said it’s suspected that an anchor or a piece of gear, such as a trawling net, snagged the cable last Dec. 24. He said the cable was then brought to the surface along with the gear, and deliberately cut by someone.
“The telltale sign that we have is that there’s almost like a cut, or like an angle grinder cut, through the cable,” Joice said in a recent interview with CBC Radio’s Information Morning Cape Breton.
“That’s a pretty tough thing to do because … it’s just not like a fibre optic cable that you’d see on the poles or going to your home, but it’s actually wrapped in steel. So it takes a lot of effort to actually cut.”
The 140-kilometre cable, which runs from Dingwall, N.S., to Codroy, N.L., was also sliced in a similar way in December 2023. Who cut the cable and why remains a mystery in both cases.
Cable buried in sea floor
Now that the cable has been repaired, Joice said Bell is working to prevent similar tampering, including burying the line in the sea floor. It’s also considering using satellite imagery to monitor the area.
In the meantime, Joice said the company is co-operating with the RCMP in its investigation.
“We really want to make sure the RCMP conducts their investigation fully,” Joice said. “Then I guess we’d take things from there.”
The cable is a primary network path to Newfoundland and Labrador.
While waiting for the cable to be repaired, a team from Bell reconfigured the network so there would be no impact to customers, said Patricia Garcia, a communications manager for Bell.
Information Morning – Cape Breton6:35Sub-sea troubles
Bell had to send a special ship and crew off the coast of Cape Breton recently to repair a sub-sea cable. We get an update from the Director of Networks with Bell.
Painstaking repair work
Over the past week, a repair ship was sent from Halifax to fix the cable, she said. The vessel, called the IT Intrepid, uses a rover to locate a cable and bring it to the surface before handing it off to a crane. A team of about 60 people works around the clock to complete the repair.
There are not many ships in North America that can do this kind of specialized subsea cable repair, Garcia said.
“It can take months until a ship becomes available,” she said. “Also, carrying out this work is weather dependent and requires moderate and temperate conditions.”
While Joice said it’s rare that cables are intentionally damaged, it’s not unheard of.
On Dec. 25, 2024, a day after the Bell cable was cut, an underwater power cable in the Baltic Sea was suspiciously severed near the mouth of the Gulf of Finland, along with four internet cables. At the time, suspicion fell on ships connected to Russia.
Estonia and Finland have since boosted their patrols of the area, along with NATO.
