Coral Sea Cable reaches sea depth of 4,650m

30 Jul

The cable laying vessel, the Ile de Brehat, stationed in the Coral Sea. The buoy marks the location of the PNG segment of the cable (Credit: Vocus)

The three segments of cable that make up the Coral Sea Cable System were connected on Tuesday 23 July 2019 by engineers aboard the Ile de Brehat.

The complex process of connecting the three cables is achieved through a device known as a Branching Unit (BU). To make the connection, the Ile de Brehat retrieved the previously laid segment of cable 910km offshore from Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the Coral Sea.

Once the previously-laid cable was retrieved, it was then jointed aboard the Ile de Brehat to the cable segment that had just been laid from Honiara and to the end of the new cable segment that will be laid to Sydney.

Once the BU had been tested and the integrity of the joints validated, the BU was deployed, coming to rest at a water depth of 4,650m.

The Ile de Brehat then continued its journey south toward Sydney, where it is expected to land the Australian end of the cable in August 2019.