Scientists were able to monitor seismic activity with a fibre optic cable connecting a North Sea wind farm to the shore.
Installing seismic sensors on the ocean floor can be a difficult and expensive task. But what if seismic activity could be monitored by using something that’s already down there – pre-existing submarine telecommunications cables? Partially supported by the EU-funded FINESSE project, an international team of geoscientists has used fibre optic communications cables at the bottom of the North Sea as a giant seismic network. The team tracked both earthquakes and ocean waves.
Their research was published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’. “We have presented and analyzed our observations of seismic and ocean waves on an ocean-bottom DAS [distributed acoustic sensing] array offshore Belgium, demonstrating that DAS arrays utilizing existing ocean-bottom fiber optic installations can offer high-value seismographic and oceanographic data products.”
Quoted in a news release by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), study lead author Ethan F. Williams says: “Fiber optic communications cables are growing more and more common on the sea floor. Rather than place a whole new device, we can tap into some of this fiber and start observing seismicity immediately.”
DAS, the technique used by the researchers, was developed for energy exploration but was repurposed for seismology. It employs a photonic device that sends short pulses of laser light down the fibre optic cable.
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