Why Sharks Attack The Internet

Every week, around three undersea internet cables get damaged badly enough to need urgent repair... and the culprit usually isn’t sabotage.

Submarine cables carry more than 99% of the world’s international data, from your video calls to global financial transactions. Yet they lie on the ocean floor, where fishing gear and dragging ship anchors cause huge amounts of the damage.

In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) investigate the hidden network of underwater cables holding the internet together, and the problems that come with running it across the bottom of the ocean.

How do you lay a cable across an entire ocean? What happens when one breaks miles below the surface? And in the age of satellites, why are we still relying on cables on the seabed?

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Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek

Animator: Sam Benson

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Producer: Simona Rata + Lucy Lipscombe

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

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