Hydroacoustic signals captured by the world’s international nuclear monitoring system suggest an underwater landslide may have broken communications cables and disrupted internet traffic in west African countries for several weeks in March 2024.
Hydroacoustic signals captured by the world’s international nuclear monitoring system suggest an underwater landslide may have broken communications cables and disrupted internet traffic in west African countries for several weeks in March 2024.
Researchers used data collected by hydrophones installed by the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) to determine the location of the possible landslide, placing it along the steep slopes of Trou Sans Fond Canyon offshore of Ivory Coast.
The proposed landslide corresponds with the timing and location of four broken cables in the canyon, according to Vaibhav Vijay Ingale of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and colleagues, who shared their findings in Seismological Research Letters.
“This detection off Ivory Coast is particularly exciting because it demonstrates the potential of using existing hydroacoustic data to monitor submarine landslides more effectively”, said Ingale. “It suggests that there could be many more events like this happening that we’re simply not aware of, either due to a lack of monitoring infrastructure or because we haven’t been actively looking for them in the hydroacoustic data.
