The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
O n On the afternoon of March 11th, 2011, Mitsuyoshi Hirai, the chief engineer of the cable maintenance ship Ocean Link, was sitting in his cabin 20 miles off Japan’s eastern coast, completing the paperwork that comes at the end of every repair.
2011 年 3 月 11 日下午，电缆维护船 Ocean Link 的总工程师 Mitsuyoshi Hirai 坐在距离日本东海岸 20 英里的船舱里，完成每次维修结束时的文书工作。
Two weeks earlier, something — you rarely knew what — damaged the 13,000-mile fiber optic cable connecting Kitaibaraki, Japan, and Point Arena, California.
两周前，连接日本北茨城和加利福尼亚州波因特阿雷纳的 13,000 英里长的光缆发生了一些你很少知道的事情。
Alarms went off; calls were made; and the next day, Hirai was sailing out of the port in Yokohama to fix it.
警报响起；已拨打电话；第二天，平井从横滨港口起航去修理它。
The repair was now nearly done.
现在修复工作已接近完成。
All that remained was to rebury the cable on the seafloor, which they were doing using a bulldozer-sized remotely operated submersible named Marcas — and, of course, the paperwork.
剩下的就是将电缆重新埋在海底，他们使用的是推土机大小的遥控潜水器 Marcas，当然还有文书工作。
Suddenly, the ship began to shudder.
突然，船开始颤抖。
Hirai got to his feet, found he could barely stand, and staggered out of his cabin, grasping the handrail as he pulled himself up the narrow stairway to the bridge.
平井站了起来，发现自己几乎站不住了，他摇摇晃晃地走出船舱，抓住扶手，爬上通往舰桥的狭窄楼梯。
“Engine trouble?” Hirai asked the captain, who’d already checked and replied that everything seemed normal.
“发动机出问题了？”平井询问机长，机长已经检查过并回答说一切正常。
The ship continued to tremble.
船继续颤抖。
Looking out from the bridge, the sea appeared to be boiling.
从桥上望去，大海仿佛沸腾了。
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A sketch of the Ocean Link in port in Yokohama transitions into a video of the ship.
横滨港口的 Ocean Link 草图转变为该船的视频。
A bird flies overhead and waves lap at its hull.
一只鸟从头顶飞过，海浪拍打着它的船体。
They turned on the television.
他们打开了电视。
An emergency alert showed that an earthquake had struck 130 miles northeast of their location.
紧急警报显示，距他们所在位置东北 130 英里的地方发生了地震。
The shaking finally stopped, and in the silence, Hirai’s mind leapt to what would come next: a tsunami.
震动终于停止了，在寂静中，平井的思绪跳到了接下来会发生的事情：海啸。
Hirai feared these waves more than most people.
平井比大多数人更害怕这些海浪。
He had grown up hearing the story of how one afternoon in 1923, his aunt felt the ground shake, swept up her two-year-old brother, and sprinted uphill to the cemetery, narrowly escaping floods and fires that killed over 100,000 people.
他从小就听着这样的故事长大：1923 年的一个下午，他的姨妈感到地面震动，卷走了她两岁的弟弟，然后冲上山冲向墓地，险些逃离了造成 10 万人死亡的洪水和火灾。
That child became Hirai’s father, so he owed his existence to his aunt’s quick thinking.
那个孩子成为了平井的父亲，所以他的存在归功于姨妈的敏捷思维。
Now, he found himself in the same position.
现在，他发现自己也处于同样的境地。
He knew tsunamis become dangerous when all the water displaced by the quake reaches shallow water and slows and grows taller.
他知道，当地震排出的所有水都到达浅水区并减慢速度并变得更高时，海啸就会变得危险。
The Ocean Link, floating in less than 500 feet of water, was too shallow for comfort.
Ocean Link 漂浮在不到 500 英尺的水中，太浅，不舒服。
Mitsuyoshi Hirai, the former chief engineer of the Ocean Link.
平井光吉（Mitsuyoshi Hirai），Ocean Link 前总工程师。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
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In the family tree of professions, submarine cable work occupies a lonely branch somewhere between heavy construction and neurosurgery.
在职业谱系中，海底电缆工作在重型建筑和神经外科之间占据着一个孤独的分支。
It’s precision engineering on a shifting sea using heavy metal hooks and high-tension lines that, if they snap, can cut a person in half.
这是在多变的大海上进行的精密工程，使用重金属钩和高压线，如果它们折断，可以将人切成两半。
In Hirai’s three decades with Kokusai Cable Ship Company (KCS), he had learned that every step must be followed, no matter how chaotic the situation.
平井在国际电缆船公司（KCS）工作了三十年，他了解到无论情况多么混乱，每一步都必须遵循。
Above all else, he often said, “you must always be cool.”
最重要的是，他经常说，“你必须永远保持冷静。”
Across Ocean Link’s 400-foot deck, the ship’s 50 crew members were emerging from their cabins and workstations, trying to figure out what had just occurred.
在 Ocean Link 400 英尺长的甲板上，船上的 50 名船员正从他们的船舱和工作站中走出来，试图弄清楚刚刚发生了什么。
Over the intercom, the captain announced that there had been an earthquake, a tsunami was coming, and the crew should ready the ship to evacuate to deeper water.
船长通过对讲机宣布发生了地震，海啸即将来临，船员们应该做好撤离到更深水域的准备。
The crew fanned out to check fuel tanks and lash down machinery.
船员们分散开来检查油箱并绑扎机械。
Inside a darkened, monitor-filled shipping container on the starboard deck, the submersible’s pilot steered Marcas back toward the ship as fast as the bulky robot’s propellers could carry it.
在右舷甲板上一个黑暗的、装满显示器的集装箱内，潜水器的飞行员以笨重的机器人螺旋桨所能携带的最快速度驾驶马卡斯返回船。
Minutes later, the submersible was hoisted aboard and the Ocean Link was underway.
几分钟后，潜水器被吊上船，Ocean Link 开始施工。
Controls on the bridge of the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 桥上的控制装置。
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View from the bridge of the Ocean Link.
从海洋连接桥上看到的景色。
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Lifeboat aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的救生艇。
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Cable attached to the remotely operated submersible Marcas.
连接到远程操作潜水器 Marcas 的电缆。
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The tsunami passed under them imperceptibly on their way out to sea, and when they came to a stop three hours later, the television was showing the first images of destruction.
海啸在出海途中不知不觉地从他们身下经过，三小时后他们停下来时，电视上正在显示第一批破坏画面。
Members of the crew who weren’t working gathered on the bridge to watch the news, which continued to display a tsunami warning, a map of Japan with its eastern seaboard glowing red.
没有工作的船员们聚集在舰桥上观看新闻，新闻中继续显示海啸警报，以及一张日本东部海岸发出红色光芒的地图。
They took turns trying to reach loved ones using the ship’s satellite phone, but no calls went through.
他们轮流尝试使用船上的卫星电话联系亲人，但没有电话接通。
As night fell, periodic aftershocks thumped against the hull.
夜幕降临，周期性的余震猛烈地撞击着船体。
Hirai thought about his wife, who was working at a department store in Yokohama near the Ocean Link’s port; his son, a junior in high school at the time; and his parents, whom the family lived with in his hometown of Yokosuka — none of whom he’d been able to reach.
平井想到了他的妻子，她在横滨海洋联线港口附近的一家百货商店工作。他的儿子当时正在上高中；还有他的父母，他们一家人住在他的家乡横须贺，但他一直没能联系上他们。
Everyone had someone they were worried about.
每个人都有自己担心的人。
But Hirai also began to think about the work he knew lay ahead.
但平井也开始思考他所知道的未来工作。
The Ocean Link was one of a small number of ships that maintain the subsea cables that carry 99 percent of the world’s data.
Ocean Link 是少数维护海底电缆的船舶之一，这些电缆承载着世界上 99% 的数据。
Positioned in strategic locations around the planet, these ships stand ready to sail out and fix faults the moment they are detected, and most of the time, they are more than equal to the task.
这些船只位于地球各地的战略要地，一经发现就随时准备出航并修复故障，而且大多数时候，它们都能够胜任任务。
But earthquakes, Hirai knew from experience, were different.
但平井根据经验知道，地震是不同的。
They didn’t just break one cable — they broke many, and badly.
他们不仅折断了一根电缆，还折断了很多根电缆，而且折断得很严重。
If what he feared had happened, Japan risked being cut off from the world in its moment of need.
如果他担心的事情发生了，日本就有可能在需要的时候与世界隔绝。
Sure enough, that night, a call came from headquarters confirming the Ocean Link was safe and directing them to remain at sea until further notice, followed by messages announcing cable failure after cable failure, including the one they had just finished repairing.
果然，那天晚上，总部打来电话，确认“海洋链路”号是安全的，并指示他们留在海上，等待进一步通知，随后又传来一条又一条电缆故障的消息，包括他们刚刚修复完的那根。
Fumihide Kobayashi standing in front of the submersible Marcas.
小林文秀站在潜水器马卡斯前面。
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Cable industry professionals tend to be pragmatic people, preoccupied with the material realities of working planet-scale construction.
电缆行业的专业人士往往是务实的人，专注于全球规模建设的物质现实。
But in conversations about landing high-bandwidth cables in digitally neglected regions or putting millions of people back in contact with every fiber strand melted together, they often hint at a sense of larger purpose, an awareness that they are performing a function vital to a world that, if they do their jobs well, will continue to be unaware of their service.
但在谈论在数字被忽视的地区铺设高带宽电缆或让数百万人重新接触到每根融化在一起的光纤时，他们常常暗示一种更大的目标感，一种意识到他们正在履行对世界至关重要的职能，如果他们做好自己的工作，世界将继续不知道他们的服务。
For the Ocean Link crew, this awareness was bound up in a still unfolding national tragedy.
对于 Ocean Link 的工作人员来说，这种意识与仍在上演的国家悲剧息息相关。
They knew that whenever they returned to land, they would have to care for their loved ones quickly, because they would soon be going back out to sea.
他们知道，每当他们返回陆地时，他们都必须尽快照顾亲人，因为他们很快就要回到海上。
For how long, no one knew.
持续了多久，没有人知道。
T he The world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose.
全世界的电子邮件、TikTok、机密备忘录、银行转账、卫星监控和 FaceTime 通话都是通过像花园水管一样细的电缆传输的。
There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography.
据行业跟踪组织 TeleGeography 称，这些细长的管道约有 800,000 英里，纵横交错于地球海洋，代表了近 600 个不同的系统。
The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data.
这些电缆埋在海岸附近，但在其大部分长度上，它们只是坐落在海底的灰色软泥和外星生物之中，其中心的细如发丝的玻璃丝闪烁着编码世界数据的激光。
If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function.
假设，如果所有这些电缆同时断裂，现代文明将停止运转。
The financial system would immediately freeze.
金融体系将立即冻结。
Currency trading would stop; stock exchanges would close.
货币交易将停止；证券交易所将关闭。
Banks and governments would be unable to move funds between countries because the Swift and US interbank systems both rely on submarine cables to settle over $10 trillion in transactions each day.
银行和政府将无法在国家之间转移资金，因为 Swift 和美国银行间系统都依赖海底电缆每天结算超过 10 万亿美元的交易。
In large swaths of the world, people would discover their credit cards no longer worked and ATMs would dispense no cash.
在世界大部分地区，人们会发现他们的信用卡不再有效，自动取款机也无法提取现金。
As US Federal Reserve staff director Steve Malphrus said at a 2009 cable security conference, “When communications networks go down, the financial services sector does not grind to a halt.
正如美联储幕僚长 Steve Malphrus 在 2009 年的一次有线安全会议上所说：“当通信网络出现故障时，金融服务业不会陷入停滞。
It snaps to a halt.”
它突然停止了。”
Corporations would lose the ability to coordinate overseas manufacturing and logistics.
企业将失去协调海外制造和物流的能力。
Seemingly local institutions would be paralyzed as outsourced accounting, personnel, and customer service departments went dark.
由于外包会计、人事和客户服务部门陷入瘫痪，当地机构似乎将陷入瘫痪。
Governments, which rely on the same cables as everyone else for the vast majority of their communications, would be largely cut off from their overseas outposts and each other.
各国政府的绝大多数通信都依赖与其他国家相同的电缆，因此它们与海外前哨基地以及彼此之间的联系将在很大程度上被切断。
Satellites would not be able to pick up even half a percent of the traffic.
卫星甚至无法接收到一半的流量。
Contemplating the prospect of a mass cable cut to the UK, then-MP Rishi Sunak concluded, “Short of nuclear or biological warfare, it is difficult to think of a threat that could be more justifiably described as existential.”
在考虑大规模切断通往英国的电缆的前景时，当时的国会议员里希·苏纳克总结道：“如果没有核战争或生物战争，很难想象还有什么威胁可以更合理地描述为存在的威胁。”
Fortunately, there is enough redundancy in the world’s cables to make it nearly impossible for a well-connected country to be cut off, but cable breaks do happen.
幸运的是，世界上的电缆有足够的冗余，使得一个连接良好的国家几乎不可能被切断，但电缆断裂确实发生了。
On average, they happen every other day, about 200 times a year.
平均而言，此类事件每隔一天发生一次，每年大约发生 200 次。
The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks.
网站持续加载、银行转账顺利进行、文明得以持续存在，是因为居住在驻扎在世界各地的 20 多艘船上的大约数千人，他们在每条电缆断裂时竞相修复。
Grapnel flukes of varying lengths for retrieving buried cables.
不同长度的抓钩爪用于回收埋在地下的电缆。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
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Grapnels on the foredeck of the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 前甲板上的抓钩。
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“Mushroom” anchors, used instead of fluked anchors to avoid entangling cables.
“蘑菇”锚，用来代替有爪锚，以避免缠绕电缆。
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Bow sheave on the Ocean Link, where cables and grapnel ropes pass over into the sea.
海洋连接线上的弓滑轮，缆绳和抓钩绳索穿过这里进入大海。
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View of the Ocean Link bridge from the foredeck.
从前甲板看到的 Ocean Link 大桥。
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The industry responsible for this crucial work traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy.
负责这项重要工作的行业的起源可以追溯到互联网之外，甚至超越了电话，一直到电报的早期。
It’s invisible, underappreciated, analog.
它是看不见的、未被充分重视的、模拟的。
Few people set out to join the profession, mostly because few people know it exists.
很少有人开始加入这个行业，主要是因为很少有人知道它的存在。
Hirai’s career path is characteristic in its circuitousness.
平井一夫的职业道路以曲折为特点。
Growing up in the 1960s in the industrial city of Yokosuka, just down the Miura Peninsula from the Ocean Link’s port in Yokohama, he worked at his parents’ fish market from the age of 12.
他于 20 世纪 60 年代在工业城市横须贺长大，该城市位于横滨 Ocean Link 港口的三浦半岛下游，从 12 岁起就在父母的鱼市场工作。
A teenage love of American rock ‘n’ roll led to a desire to learn English, which led him to take a job at 18 as a switchboard operator at the telecom company KDDI as a means to practice.
青少年时期对美国摇滚乐的热爱导致了学习英语的愿望，这促使他在 18 岁时在电信公司 KDDI 找到了一份总机接线员的工作，作为练习的手段。
When he was 26, he transferred to a cable landing station in Okinawa because working on the beach would let him perfect his windsurfing.
26 岁时，他转学到冲绳的一个电缆登陆站，因为在海滩上工作可以让他完善帆板运动。
This was his introduction to cable maintenance and also where he met his wife.
这是他对电缆维护的介绍，也是他结识妻子的地方。
Six years later, his English proficiency got him called back to KDDI headquarters to help design Ocean Link for KCS, a KDDI subsidiary.
六年后，他的英语水平让他回到 KDDI 总部，帮助为 KDDI 子公司 KCS 设计 Ocean Link。
Once it was built, he decided to go to sea with it, eventually becoming the ship’s chief engineer.
船建成后，他决定带着它出海，最终成为这艘船的总工程师。
Captain Shoichi Suzuki in the bridge of the Ocean Link.
铃木翔一船长在海洋连线的舰桥上。
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Others come to the field from merchant navies, marine construction, cable engineering, geology, optics, or other tangentially related disciplines.
其他人则来自商船、海洋工程、电缆工程、地质学、光学或其他无关的相关学科。
When Fumihide Kobayashi, the submersible operator — a tall and solidly built man from the mountain region of Nagano — joined KCS at the age of 20, he thought he would be working on ship maintenance, not working aboard a maintenance ship.
潜水器操作员小林文秀（Fumihide Kobayashi）是一位来自长野山区的身材高大、体格健壮的男子，20 岁时加入 KCS 时，他以为自己会从事船舶维修工作，而不是在维修船上工作。
He had never been on a boat before, but Hirai enticed him to stay with stories of all the whales and other marine creatures he would see on the remote ocean.
他以前从未坐过船，但平井引诱他留下来，讲述他在遥远的海洋上看到的所有鲸鱼和其他海洋生物的故事。
Once people are in, they tend to stay.
一旦人们进来，他们往往会留下来。
For some, it’s the adventure — repairing cables in the churning currents of the Congo Canyon, enduring hull-denting North Atlantic storms.
对于一些人来说，这是一次冒险——在刚果峡谷的翻腾水流中修复电缆，忍受北大西洋风暴对船体造成的凹痕。
Others find a sense of purpose in maintaining the infrastructure on which society depends, even if most people’s response when they hear about their job is, But isn’t the internet all satellites by now?
其他人在维护社会所依赖的基础设施方面找到了使命感，即使大多数人在听到他们的工作时的反应是，但现在互联网不都是卫星吗？
The sheer scale of the work can be thrilling, too.
这项工作的规模之大也令人兴奋。
People will sometimes note that these are the largest construction projects humanity has ever built or sum up a decades-long resume by saying they’ve laid enough cable to circle the planet six times.
人们有时会注意到这些是人类有史以来最大的建设项目，或者总结了长达数十年的简历，说他们已经铺设了足够的电缆绕地球六圈。
KCS has around 80 employees, many of whom, like Hirai, have worked there for decades.
KCS 拥有约 80 名员工，其中许多人，如 Hirai，已经在那里工作了数十年。
Because the industry is small and careers long, it can seem like everyone knows one another.
因为这个行业很小，职业生涯很长，所以看起来每个人都互相认识。
People often refer to it as a family.
人们通常将其称为家庭。
Shipboard life lends itself to a strong sense of camaraderie, with periods of collaboration under pressure followed by long stretches — en route to a worksite or waiting for storms to pass — without much to do but hang out.
船上生活给人一种强烈的友情感，先是在压力下进行合作，然后是很长一段时间——在前往工地的途中或等待风暴过去——除了闲逛之外没有什么可做的。
Kobayashi learned to fish off the side of the ship and attempted to improve the repetitive cuisine by serving his crewmates sashimi.
小林学会了在船边钓鱼，并试图通过为船员提供生鱼片来改善重复的菜肴。
(His favorite is squid, but his colleagues would prefer he use the squid to catch mackerel.) Hirai, an enthusiastic athlete, figured out how to string up a net on the Ocean Link’s helideck and play tennis.
（他最喜欢的是鱿鱼，但他的同事更喜欢他用鱿鱼来捕捉鲭鱼。）平井是一位热情的运动员，他想出了如何在 Ocean Link 的直升机停机坪上挂网并打网球。
Other times, he would join the crew for karaoke in the lounge, a wood-paneled room behind an anomalous stained-glass door containing massage chairs, a DVD library, and a bar.
其他时候，他会和工作人员一起在休息室唱卡拉 OK，休息室是一间镶着木板的房间，后面有一扇不寻常的彩色玻璃门，里面有按摩椅、DVD 库和酒吧。
A self-described “walking jukebox,” Hirai favored Simon & Garfunkel and Billy Joel, though he said the younger members of the fleet didn’t go in for it as much.
平井一夫自称为“行走的点唱机”，他最喜欢西蒙和加芬克尔和比利·乔尔，尽管他说舰队中的年轻成员并不那么喜欢。
Galley aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的厨房。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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A shrine aboard the Ocean Link bridge.
Ocean Link 桥上的一座神社。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The lounge aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的休息室。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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Galley aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的厨房。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The world is in the midst of a cable boom, with multiple new transoceanic lines announced every year.
世界正处于电缆热潮之中，每年都会宣布多条新的跨洋线路。
But there is growing concern that the industry responsible for maintaining these cables is running perilously lean.
但人们越来越担心负责维护这些电缆的行业正在以精简的方式运营，这是危险的。
There are 77 cable ships in the world, according to data supplied by SubTel Forum, but most are focused on the more profitable work of laying new systems.
根据 SubTel Forum 提供的数据，全球有 77 艘电缆船，但大多数都专注于铺设新系统这一更有利可图的工作。
Only 22 are designated for repair, and it’s an aging and eclectic fleet.
只有 22 架被指定进行维修，这是一支老化且不拘一格的机队。
Often, maintenance is their second act.
通常，维护是他们的第二件事。
Some, like Alcatel’s Ile de Molene, are converted tugs.
有些是由拖船改装而成，例如阿尔卡特的莫林岛。
Others, like Global Marine’s Wave Sentinel, were once ferries.
其他的，比如 Global Marine 的 Wave Sentinel，曾经是渡轮。
Global Marine recently told Data Centre Dynamics that it’s trying to extend the life of its ships to 40 years, citing a lack of money.
Global Marine 最近告诉 Data Center Dynamics，由于缺乏资金，该公司正试图将其船舶的使用寿命延长至 40 年。
One out of 4 repair ships have already passed that milestone.
四分之一的维修船已经通过了这一里程碑。
The design life for bulk carriers and oil tankers, by contrast, is 20 years.
相比之下，散货船和油轮的设计寿命为 20 年。
“We’re all happy to spend billions to build new cables, but we’re not really thinking about how we’re going to look after them,” said Mike Constable, the former CEO of Huawei Marine Networks, who gave a presentation on the state of the maintenance fleet at an industry event in Singapore last year.
华为海洋网络前首席执行官迈克·康斯特勃尔(Mike Constable)表示：“我们很高兴花费数十亿美元建造新电缆，但我们并没有真正考虑如何维护它们。”他去年在新加坡举行的一次行业活动上介绍了维护船队的状况。
“If you talk to the ship operators, they say it’s not sustainable anymore.”
“如果你与船舶运营商交谈，他们会说这不再可持续。”
He pointed to a case last year when four of Vietnam’s five subsea cables went down , slowing the internet to a crawl.
他提到了去年的一个案例，当时越南的五条海底电缆中的四条发生故障，导致互联网速度减慢。
The cables hadn’t fallen victim to some catastrophic event.
这些电缆并没有成为灾难性事件的受害者。
It was just the usual entropy of fishing, shipping, and technical failure.
这只是捕鱼、运输和技术故障的常见熵。
But with nearby ships already busy on other repairs, the cables didn’t get fixed for six months.
但由于附近的船只已经忙于其他维修工作，电缆六个月都没有修好。
(One promptly broke again .)
（其中一个很快又坏了。）
But perhaps a greater threat to the industry’s long-term survival is that the people, like the ships, are getting old.
但对该行业长期生存的更大威胁或许是，人们就像船舶一样正在变老。
In a profession learned almost entirely on the job, people take longer to train than ships to build.
在一个几乎完全通过工作学习的职业中，人们的培训时间比船舶建造时间还要长。
“One of the biggest problems we have in this industry is attracting new people to it,” said Constable.
“我们这个行业面临的最大问题之一是吸引新人加入，”康斯特布尔说。
He recalled another panel he was on in Singapore meant to introduce university students to the industry.
他回忆起他在新加坡参加的另一个小组，旨在向大学生介绍该行业。
“The audience was probably about 10 university kids and 60 old gray people from the industry just filling out their day,” he said.
“观众可能是大约 10 名大学生和 60 名刚刚度过一天的业内老人，”他说。
When he speaks with students looking to get into tech, he tries to convince them that subsea cables are also part — a foundational part — of the tech industry.
当他与希望进入科技行业的学生交谈时，他试图让他们相信海底电缆也是科技行业的一部分——基础部分。
“They all want to be data scientists and that sort of stuff,” he said.
“他们都想成为数据科学家之类的人，”他说。
“But for me, I find this industry fascinating.
“但对我来说，我发现这个行业很有趣。
You’re dealing with the most hostile environment on the planet, eight kilometers deep in the oceans, working with some pretty high technology, traveling all over the world.
你正在应对地球上最恶劣的环境，在八公里深的海洋中，使用一些相当高的技术，在世界各地旅行。
You’re on the forefront of geopolitics, and it’s critical for the whole way the world operates now.”
你们处于地缘政治的最前沿，这对于当今世界的整体运作方式至关重要。”
The lifestyle can be an obstacle.
生活方式可能是一个障碍。
A career in subsea means enduring long stretches far from home, unpredictable schedules, and ironically, very poor internet.
海底职业意味着要忍受长时间远离家乡、不可预测的日程安排，以及讽刺的是，网络状况非常糟糕。
Kaida Takashi aboard the Ocean Link.
凯田隆登上了 Ocean Link。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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“Everyone complains about that,” said Kaida Takashi, a senior advisor at KCS, who is trying to get the Ocean Link set up with Starlink.
“每个人都抱怨这一点，”KCS 的高级顾问 Kaida Takashi 说，他正试图与 Starlink 一起建立 Ocean Link。
It’s a generational difference, he said.
他说，这是代际差异。
For someone like him, a 62-year-old ham radio enthusiast, Wi-Fi barely fast enough to email is a luxury.
对于像他这样的 62 岁业余无线电爱好者来说，速度勉强够发送电子邮件的 Wi-Fi 是一种奢侈。
Other industry veterans reminisced about the days when they felt fortunate to get faxes on board, or waiting for the mailbag in port, or the novelty of using the very cable they were laying to make calls from the middle of the ocean.
其他行业资深人士回忆起那些日子，他们感到很幸运能够在船上收到传真，或者在港口等待邮袋，或者使用他们正在铺设的电缆从大洋中央拨打电话的新奇感觉。
But for people who grew up with an expectation of constant connectivity, the disconnection of shipboard life can cause visible discomfort.
但对于那些从小就期待着持续互联的人来说，船上生活的脱节可能会带来明显的不适。
“It’s a part of them,” one industry veteran marveled of his younger colleagues.
“这是他们的一部分，”一位行业资深人士对他的年轻同事惊叹不已。
“They can’t let it go.”
“他们不能放手。”
The industry’s biggest recruiting challenge, however, is the industry’s invisibility.
然而，该行业最大的招聘挑战是该行业的隐形性。
It’s a truism that people don’t think about infrastructure until it breaks, but they tend not to think about the fixing of it, either.
众所周知，人们在基础设施出现故障之前不会考虑它，但他们也往往不会考虑修复它。
In his 2014 essay, “Rethinking Repair,” professor of information science Steven Jackson argued that contemporary thinking about technology romanticizes moments of invention over the ongoing work of maintenance, though it is equally important to the deployment of functional technology in the world.
信息科学教授史蒂文·杰克逊 (Steven Jackson) 在其 2014 年的文章“重新思考修复”中指出，当代对技术的思考将发明时刻浪漫化，而不是正在进行的维护工作，尽管这对于功能技术在世界上的部署同样重要。
There are few better examples than the subsea cable industry, which, for over a century, has been so effective at quickly fixing faults that the public has rarely had a chance to notice.
没有比海底电缆行业更好的例子了，一个多世纪以来，海底电缆行业在快速修复故障方面一直非常有效，以至于公众很少有机会注意到。
Or as one industry veteran put it, “We are one of the best-kept secrets in the world, because things just work.”
或者正如一位行业资深人士所说，“我们是世界上保守得最好的秘密之一，因为一切都很顺利。”
T he The Ocean Link spent two nights at sea before receiving orders to return.
The Ocean Link 在海上度过了两个晚上，然后才收到返回的命令。
As they neared land, Hirai saw debris from the tsunami’s backwash floating in the water: fishing nets, tires, the roofs of buildings, the bloated body of what he guessed was a cow.
当他们接近陆地时，平井看到海啸反冲的碎片漂浮在水中：渔网、轮胎、建筑物的屋顶，还有他猜测是一头牛的肿胀身体。
The earthquake measured 9.1 on the Richter scale, the fourth largest ever recorded and the largest to ever hit Japan.
这次地震为里氏 9.1 级，是有记录以来的第四大地震，也是日本有史以来发生的最大地震。
But it was the series of tsunami waves that arrived half an hour later that dealt the most destruction, surging miles inland and sweeping buildings, cars, and thousands of people out to sea.
但半小时后到来的一系列海啸造成了最严重的破坏，海啸席卷内陆数英里，将建筑物、汽车和数千人卷入大海。
The death toll would eventually climb to nearly 20,000, and the day would become a national tragedy referred to simply as “3/11.”
死亡人数最终攀升至近 20,000 人，这一天将成为一场全国性的悲剧，简称为“3/11”。
The full extent of the devastation was still becoming clear when the Ocean Link returned, but the disaster had already entered a new phase.
当海洋连接线返回时，破坏的全部程度仍然很清楚，但灾难已经进入了一个新的阶段。
One hundred and sixty miles north of Tokyo, a 50-foot tsunami wave overtopped a seawall protecting the Fukushima power plant, swamping the emergency generators that were cooling the reactors through its automatic post-quake shutdown and precipitating a nuclear meltdown.
在东京以北一百六十英里处，一场 50 英尺高的海啸席卷了保护福岛核电站的海堤，淹没了通过震后自动关闭来冷却反应堆的应急发电机，并引发了核熔毁。
Hirai’s wife and son had made it back home to their house in Yokosuka, where they lived with Hirai’s parents.
平井的妻子和儿子已经回到横须贺的家中，与平井的父母住在一起。
Kobayashi’s family, too, was safe.
小林的家人也很安全。
Some crew lost loved ones; others sent family to stay with relatives in the south out of fear of radiation.
一些船员失去了亲人；其他人出于对辐射的恐惧而将家人送到南方的亲戚那里。
They all knew that they had only a few days before they would be sent back out to sea.
他们都知道，只剩下几天的时间，他们就要被送回海上了。
The disaster had severed phone lines and wrecked cell towers, causing phone service to cut out almost immediately after the earthquake struck.
这场灾难导致电话线路中断，手机信号塔被毁，导致电话服务在地震发生后几乎立即中断。
Instead, people turned to email, Skype, and other online services that were mostly able to route around damage to the network.
相反，人们转向电子邮件、Skype 和其他在线服务，这些服务大多能够绕过网络损坏。
There was a sense, according to one engineer’s postmortem presentation , that the internet was the only media that survived.
根据一位工程师的事后报告，人们有一种感觉，互联网是唯一幸存下来的媒体。
But its survival was more tenuous than the public knew.
但它的生存比公众所知的更加脆弱。
While the cables connecting Japan to the rest of the world survived the initial destruction, later that night, as millions of people tried to find their way home with trains stopped and power intermittent, engineers in Tokyo network operation centers watched as one cable after another failed.
虽然连接日本与世界其他地区的电缆在最初的破坏中幸存下来，但当晚晚些时候，当数百万人试图在火车停止、电力断断续续的情况下寻找回家的路时，东京网络运营中心的工程师们眼睁睁地看着一根又一根电缆出现故障。
By the next morning, seven of Japan’s 12 transpacific cables were severed.
到第二天早上，日本 12 条跨太平洋电缆中有 7 条被切断。
Engineers working through the night and following days managed to shift traffic to those that remained, but the new routes were near their maximum capacity.
工程师们通宵达旦和接下来的几天工作，设法将交通转移到剩下的路线上，但新路线已接近其最大容量。
The head of telecom company NTT’s operation center at the time estimated that if another cable failed, it would have lost all traffic to the US.
电信公司 NTT 运营中心负责人当时估计，如果另一条电缆发生故障，到美国的所有流量都会丢失。
With servers for most major internet companies located there, Japan would have effectively lost the internet.
由于大多数主要互联网公司的服务器都位于那里，日本实际上将失去互联网。
Normally, the sequence of repairs would be determined by whichever cable owner reported the fault first, but given the extraordinary circumstances, the usually self-interested cable owners agreed to defer to KCS.
通常情况下，修复的顺序将由首先报告故障的电缆所有者决定，但考虑到特殊情况，通常自私的电缆所有者同意听从 KCS 的意见。
The priority was to repair a cable — any cable — as fast as possible.
当务之急是尽快修复电缆（任何电缆）。
It was impossible to know the state of the cables on the ocean floor, so like forensic investigators, Hirai and the other engineers had to work with the sparse facts available.
不可能了解海底电缆的状态，因此像法医调查人员一样，平井和其他工程师必须利用现有的稀疏事实。
By having the cable landing stations on either side of the ocean beam light down their end of the line and time the reflections back, they were able to locate the faults nearest to them within a few meters.
通过让海洋两侧的电缆登陆站将光束照射到线路末端并对反射回来的时间进行计时，他们能够在几米内找到离它们最近的断层。
Most of the faults lay in deep water, in the canyons channeling into the Japan Trench.
大多数断层位于深水中，位于通向日本海沟的峡谷中。
This, plus the timing of the faults, indicated it wasn’t the quake that broke them but the underwater avalanches it triggered.
再加上断层发生的时间，表明不是地震破坏了它们，而是它引发的水下雪崩。
Submarine landslides are awesome events whose existence was only discovered in the 1950s, when scientists analyzed the timing of 12 cable faults that severed communication between Europe and North America two decades earlier.
海底滑坡是可怕的事件，其存在直到 20 世纪 50 年代才被发现，当时科学家分析了 20 年前导致欧洲和北美通讯中断的 12 起电缆故障的发生时间。
Before then, according to oceanographer Mike Clare, “It was assumed that deep water was boring and nothing happens down there.” In fact, the ocean floor is riven with mountains and canyons that experience avalanches that dwarf anything found on land, cascades of sediment and debris racing for hundreds of miles.
海洋学家迈克·克莱尔表示，在此之前，“人们认为深水很无聊，那里什么也没有发生。”事实上，海底布满了山脉和峡谷，它们经历的雪崩使陆地上的任何东西都相形见绌，沉积物和碎片飞速延伸数百英里。
Hirai had dealt with them in Taiwan in 2006, one of the most notorious events in the annals of cable repair.
平井曾于 2006 年在台湾处理过这些事件，这是电缆修复史上最臭名昭著的事件之一。
On December 26th, an earthquake dislodged sediment on Taiwan’s southern coast and sent it rushing 160 miles into the Luzon Strait, one of several global cable chokepoints.
12 月 26 日，一场地震使台湾南部海岸的沉积物发生移动，并使其冲入 160 英里的吕宋海峡，这是全球几个电缆阻塞点之一。
Nine cables were severed and Taiwan was knocked almost entirely offline.
九根电缆被切断，台湾几乎完全瘫痪。
Banking, airlines, and communications were disrupted throughout the region.
整个地区的银行、航空公司和通讯都受到干扰。
Trading of the Korean won was halted.
韩元交易停止。
The cables, buried under mountains of debris, were nearly impossible to find.
这些电缆埋在堆积如山的废墟下，几乎不可能找到。
It took 11 ships, including the Ocean Link, nearly two months to finish repairs.
包括Ocean Link号在内的11艘船用了近两个月的时间才完成维修。
Often in a multi-cable disaster like the Taiwan earthquake, every ship in the region comes to assist.
通常，在像台湾地震这样的多缆灾难中，该地区的每艘船都会前来提供援助。
But with Japan, there was an unprecedented complication: the majority of the faults were located offshore of the ongoing nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.
但在日本，出现了前所未有的复杂情况：大部分断层位于福岛正在进行的核泄漏的近海。
Ship operators deemed assistance too risky, which meant that, for the time being, the Ocean Link was on its own.
船舶运营商认为援助风险太大，这意味着 Ocean Link 目前只能靠自己。
The crew felt not only duty bound to work but uniquely capable of doing so.
船员们不仅觉得自己有义务工作，而且觉得自己有能力这样做。
They had dealt with radiation before, though not at this scale.
他们以前曾处理过辐射，尽管规模不是这么大。
In 1993, shortly before the Ocean Link was to lay a cable linking Japan, Korea, and Russia, they learned the Soviets had dumped radioactive waste in the ocean along the planned route.
1993年，就在海洋联线计划铺设连接日本、韩国和俄罗斯的电缆之前不久，他们得知苏联已沿计划路线将放射性废物倾倒在海洋中。
With some trepidation, KCS proceeded with the job.
带着一些惶恐，KCS 继续了这项工作。
They bought Geiger counters and protective gear, flew in nurses from the US with chemical weapons training, and scanned the water for radiation as they went.
他们购买了盖革计数器和防护装备，从美国飞来接受过化学武器培训的护士，并在途中扫描水中是否有辐射。
When none was detected, they put the gear in storage.
当没有检测到任何情况时，他们将装备存放起来。
Now, as they readied the ship for departure, an employee was dispatched to the depot to find the old radiation gear.
现在，当他们准备船出发时，一名员工被派往仓库寻找旧的辐射设备。
A local university donated a few more sensors and trained the crew on how to use them.
当地一所大学捐赠了更多传感器，并对机组人员进行了如何使用它们的培训。
They decided to begin with the same cable they had just finished repairing when the earthquake struck.
他们决定从地震发生时刚刚修复完毕的同一根电缆开始。
On a drizzling afternoon eight days after returning to port, with smoke still rising from the Fukushima power plant, the Ocean Link set back out to sea.
返回港口八天后的一个下着毛毛细雨的下午，福岛核电站的烟雾仍在升腾，海洋联号再次出海。
Spare cables spooled in the KCS depot.
备用电缆缠绕在 KCS 仓库中。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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T o To the extent he is remembered, Cyrus Field is known to history as the person responsible for running a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean, but he also conducted what at the time was considered an equally great technical feat: the first deep-sea cable repair.
就人们对赛勒斯·菲尔德的记忆而言，赛勒斯·菲尔德在历史上因负责铺设横跨大西洋的电报电缆而闻名，但他还完成了当时被认为同样伟大的技术壮举：首次深海电缆修复。
Field, a 35-year-old self-made paper tycoon, had no experience in telegraphy — which helps explain why, in 1854, he embarked on such a quixotic mission.
菲尔德是一位 35 岁白手起家的造纸大亨，没有电报方面的经验——这有助于解释为什么他在 1854 年开始了如此堂吉诃德式的使命。
Though small bodies of water like the English Channel had been bridged by telegraph, failure was routine and costly.
尽管像英吉利海峡这样的小型水域已经通过电报架起了桥梁，但失败是家常便饭，而且代价高昂。
Cables shorted out, snapped under tension, snagged on rocks, were sliced by anchors, twisted by currents, tangled around whales, attacked by swordfish, and devoured by a “miserable little mollusc” called the Teredo worm with an appetite for jute insulation.
电缆短路、在张力下折断、被岩石卡住、被锚割断、被水流扭曲、缠绕在鲸鱼周围、被旗鱼攻击，并被一种名叫特雷多蠕虫的“可怜的小软体动物”吞噬，这种软体动物对黄麻绝缘材料有胃口。
Field fared no better.
菲尔德的表现也好不到哪儿去。
Twelve years after he began, he had endured severed cables, near sinkings, and had one “success”: a cable laid in 1858 that prompted celebrations so enthusiastic that revelers set fire to New York City Hall.
在他开始工作 12 年后，他经历了电缆断裂、险些沉没的考验，并取得了一次“成功”：1858 年铺设的一根电缆引发了如此热烈的庆祝活动，以至于狂欢者纵火焚烧了纽约市政厅。
The cable failed weeks later.
几周后电缆出现故障。
The SS Great Eastern attempting to recover the broken transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865.
1865 年，SS 大东方号试图修复破损的跨大西洋电报电缆。
Photo by Universal Images Group via Getty Loading .
照片由环球影像集团通过 Getty 拍摄。
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Sailors coiling the transatlantic telegraph cable aboard the SS Great Eastern in 1865.
1865 年，水手们在 SS 大东方号上盘绕跨大西洋电报电缆。
Photo by Universal Images Group via Getty Loading .
照片由环球影像集团通过 Getty 拍摄。
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Pieces of the first transatlantic telegraph cables and a model of the grapnel used to recover them.
第一条跨大西洋电报电缆的碎片以及用于回收它们的抓钩模型。
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Cyrus West Field, who financed and organized the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cables.
赛勒斯·韦斯特菲尔德 (Cyrus West Field) 资助并组织了第一条跨大西洋电报电缆的铺设。
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Field tried again seven years later only for the cable to snap halfway across the Atlantic.
七年后，菲尔德再次尝试，但电缆在横跨大西洋的一半处断裂。
The next year, he set out yet again, promising not only to finally lay a working transatlantic cable but to recover the broken cable and finish that one, too.
第二年，他再次出发，承诺不仅最终铺设一条可用的跨大西洋电缆，而且还修复断裂的电缆并完成该电缆。
By that time, a crude method had been developed for fixing cables in shallow water.
那时，已经开发出一种在浅水中固定电缆的粗略方法。
A ship would drag a hooked grapnel anchor across the seafloor, until, like the tremor of a fishing line, increasing tension showed they’d caught the cable, which they would then haul on board to fix.
一艘船会将钩状抓钩锚拖过海底，直到像钓鱼线的颤动一样，越来越大的张力表明他们抓住了电缆，然后他们将其拖到船上进行修复。
Field’s plan was basically this but bigger: bigger hooks, stronger rope, more powerful winding engine, all aboard the largest ship afloat, a passenger liner called the SS Great Eastern that had been retrofitted for the mission.
菲尔德的计划基本上是这样的，但规模更大：更大的钩子、更强的绳索、更强大的卷绕发动机，所有这些都在最大的漂浮船上，这艘名为“SS Great Eastern”的客轮已为这次任务进行了改装。
William Thomson, the project’s scientific adviser and the future Lord Kelvin, did the math and deemed it feasible.
该项目的科学顾问、未来的开尔文勋爵威廉·汤姆森（William Thomson）进行了计算并认为这是可行的。
“When it was first proposed to drag the bottom of the Atlantic for a cable lost in waters two and a half miles deep, the project was so daring that it seemed to be almost a war of the Titans upon the gods,” wrote Cyrus’ brother Henry.
赛勒斯的弟弟亨利写道：“当第一次提出拖拽大西洋海底寻找两英里半深的海底电缆时，这个项目非常大胆，几乎就像一场泰坦与众神的战争。”
“Yet never was anything undertaken less in the spirit of reckless desperation.
“然而，任何事情都是出于不计后果的绝望精神而采取的。
The cable was recovered as a city is taken by siege — by slow approaches, and the sure and inevitable result of mathematical calculation.”
当一座城市被围攻时，电缆被回收——通过缓慢的接近，以及数学计算的确定和不可避免的结果。”
Field’s crew caught the cable on the first try and nearly had it aboard when the rope snapped and slipped back into the sea.
菲尔德的船员第一次尝试就抓住了缆绳，差点把它拉到船上，但缆绳突然断裂并滑回海里。
After 28 more failed attempts, they caught it again.
又尝试了28次失败后，他们再次抓住了它。
When they brought it aboard and found it still worked, the crew fired rockets in celebration.
当他们把它带上飞机并发现它仍然可以工作时，船员们发射了火箭以示庆祝。
Field withdrew to his cabin, locked the door, and wept.
菲尔德回到自己的小屋，锁上门，哭了。
Cable repair today works more or less the same as in Field’s day.
今天的电缆维修工作或多或少与菲尔德时代相同。
There have been some refinements: ships now hold steady using automated dynamic positioning systems rather than churning paddle wheels in opposite directions, and Field’s pronged anchor has spawned a medieval-looking arsenal of grapnels — long chains called “rennies,” diamond-shaped “flat fish,” spring-loaded six-blade “son of sammys,” three-ton detrenchers with seven-foot blades for digging through marine muck — but at its core, cable repair is still a matter of a ship dragging a big hook along the ocean floor.
进行了一些改进：现在船舶使用自动动态定位系统保持稳定，而不是朝相反方向搅动桨轮，菲尔德的叉形锚催生了中世纪风格的抓钩武器库——称为“rennies”的长链、菱形“扁鱼”、弹簧加载的六刀片“sammys之子”、带有七英尺刀片的三吨挖沟机，用于挖掘海洋淤泥——但其核心仍然是电缆修复一艘船在海底拖着一个大钩子的问题。
Newfangled technologies like remotely operated submersibles can be useful in shallow water, but beyond 8,000 feet or so, conditions are so punishing that simple is best.
远程操作潜水器等新型技术在浅水中很有用，但在 8,000 英尺左右的深度之外，条件非常恶劣，简单就是最好的。
“It hasn’t changed in 150 years,” said Alasdair Wilkie, chair of the Atlantic Cable Maintenance & Repair Agreement (ACMA).
大西洋电缆维护和维修协议 (ACMA) 主席阿拉斯代尔·威尔基 (Alasdair Wilkie) 表示：“150 年来这一点都没有改变。”
“The Victorians did it that way and we’re doing it the same way.
“维多利亚时代的人就是这样做的，我们也在这样做。
I just think it’s one of those things that, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
我只是认为这是一种如果没有坏就不要修复的东西。”
Nor have the causes of faults changed in the last century and a half.
过去一个半世纪以来，故障原因也没有改变。
The first submarine cable, strung across the English Channel in 1850, survived for a single day before — in what may be apocryphal cable industry slander — a French eel fisherman accidentally hooked it, sliced off a piece, and came ashore bragging about his discovery of a new type of metal seaweed.
1850 年横跨英吉利海峡的第一条海底电缆仅存活了一天——这可能是电缆行业的诽谤——一位法国鳗鱼渔夫不小心钩住了它，切下了一块，然后上岸吹嘘他发现了一种新型金属海藻。
In his history of global telecommunications, How the World Was One , Arthur C.
Arthur C. 在他的全球电信史著作《世界如何是一个》中，
Clarke declared this the first blow in a war between cable companies and other users of the sea that has continued to this day.
克拉克宣称，这是有线电视公司与其他海洋用户之间持续至今的战争的第一击。
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A sketch of the Ocean Link from the foredeck transitions into a video of the ship in port.
前甲板上的 Ocean Link 草图转变为船舶停泊在港口的视频。
Humans continue to be by far the single greatest threat to cables.
迄今为止，人类仍然是电缆面临的最大威胁。
Fishing accounts for about 40 percent of faults, according to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).
根据国际电缆保护委员会 (ICPC) 的数据，捕鱼约占故障的 40%。
Bottom trawling, particularly as it extends into new regions and deeper water in pursuit of depleting fish stocks, is especially damaging.
底拖网捕捞，特别是当它延伸到新的区域和更深的水域以追捕枯竭的鱼类资源时，其破坏性尤其严重。
Last year, Chinese fishing vessels severed cables to one of Taiwan’s outlying islands, triggering an international incident.
去年，中国渔船切断了通往台湾离岛的电缆，引发了一场国际事件。
(Severing Taiwan’s cables is one of the first moves in war games of a Chinese siege.) The year before, trawlers cut multiple cables off the coast of Scotland , knocking several islands offline.
（切断台湾的电缆是中国围攻战争游戏的第一步。）前一年，拖网渔船切断了苏格兰海岸的多条电缆，导致几个岛屿断电。
Dragged anchors from cruise ships, cargo vessels, and pleasure boats are another common culprit.
游轮、货船和游船上的拖锚是另一个常见的罪魁祸首。
Last year, an improperly moored mega yacht knocked out all communication for the Caribbean island of Anguilla .
去年，一艘停泊不当的巨型游艇导致加勒比海安圭拉岛的所有通讯中断。
The fiber strands at the core of submarine cables.
海底电缆核心的纤维束。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
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Coiled submarine fiber optic cables.
盘绕的海底光缆。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
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One thing that is not a threat to cables, many in the industry are eager to emphasize, is sharks.
许多业内人士都急于强调，对电缆没有威胁的一件事是鲨鱼。
The idea that sharks eat submarine cables — repeated in news stories and even some government reports — stems from an incident in the late 1980s when AT&T was testing one of the first subsea fiber optic cables off the coast of the Canary Islands.
鲨鱼吃海底电缆的想法——在新闻报道甚至一些政府报告中反复出现——源于 20 世纪 80 年代末的一次事件，当时 AT&T 正在加那利群岛海岸测试第一条海底光缆。
The cable kept suffering mysterious faults, and when a repair ship hauled it up, teeth were found embedded near the breaks.
电缆不断出现神秘故障，当一艘修理船将其拖上来时，发现断裂处附近嵌有牙齿。
A study was launched.
一项研究启动了。
Bell Labs scientists measured jaw radii and bite strength and, at one point, tried to feed captured sharks samples of cable.
贝尔实验室的科学家测量了下颌半径和咬合强度，并一度尝试向捕获的鲨鱼喂食电缆样本。
The culprit turned out to be a deepwater crocodile shark, possibly attracted to the electromagnetic field emitted from the power repeaters.
罪魁祸首原来是一条深海鳄鱼鲨，它可能被电力中继器发出的电磁场所吸引。
Wrapping cables in metal tape seems to have solved any shark problems.
用金属带包裹电缆似乎可以解决任何鲨鱼问题。
Nevertheless, when an old YouTube video of a shark biting a cable went viral in 2014, it incited global news coverage.
然而，当 2014 年一段鲨鱼咬电缆的 YouTube 旧视频在网上疯传时，它引起了全球新闻报道。
The ICPC issued a statement (“Sharks are not the nemesis of the internet — ICPC findings”) saying that it didn’t even look like a data cable, fish bites haven’t caused a fault in many years, and that humans are almost always to blame.
ICPC 发表声明（“鲨鱼不是互联网的克星——ICPC 的调查结果”）称，它甚至看起来都不像数据线，鱼咬伤已经很多年没有造成过故障了，而且人类几乎总是罪魁祸首。
Yet the myth endures, possibly because there is something satisfying about the idea of the modern world being brought down by the appetites of a prehistoric creature, and possibly because the idea of sharks eating the internet seems only slightly less improbable than the internet consisting of tubes on the bottom of the sea.
然而这个神话仍然存在，可能是因为现代世界被史前生物的食欲所摧毁的想法令人感到满意，也可能是因为鲨鱼吃掉互联网的想法似乎只比海底管子组成的互联网稍微不太可能。
O n On March 22nd, with the world’s attention fixed on the crisis at Fukushima, the Ocean Link reached its worksite 160 miles to the south.
3 月 22 日，当全世界的注意力都集中在福岛危机时，Ocean Link 到达了以南 160 英里的工地。
They had chosen one of the faults farthest from the meltdown, but the winter wind was blowing from the north and the crew remained inside the ship until it was deemed safe to go outside.
他们选择了距离熔毁最远的断层之一，但冬天的风从北面吹来，船员们一直留在船内，直到认为可以安全外出为止。
As the chief engineer and one of the oldest members of the crew, Hirai felt it was his duty to perform the radiation checks.
作为总工程师和最年长的船员之一，平井觉得自己有责任进行辐射检查。
He pulled on the slick yellow coveralls and boots, strapped on a mask and goggles, and opened the heavy steel door leading to the foredeck.
他穿上光滑的黄色工作服和靴子，戴上面罩和护目镜，打开通往前甲板的沉重钢门。
The sky was overcast and low, and the ship rocked on a building swell as Hirai walked out onto the pocked green-painted deck and held out the wand of his Geiger counter to see what the wind carried.
天空阴沉低沉，船在一座隆起的建筑物上摇晃，平井走到坑坑洼洼的绿漆甲板上，伸出盖革计数器的魔杖看看风携带了什么。
To his relief, it registered only background radiation.
令他松了一口气的是，它只记录到了背景辐射。
Next, he walked to the side and lowered a sensor into the sea.
接下来，他走到一旁，将一个传感器放入海中。
Again, nothing.
再说一次，什么也没有。
He would do it all again in two hours, but for now, work could begin.
他将在两个小时内再次完成这一切，但现在，工作可以开始了。
They spent the first day and night surveying the worksite, moving slowly along the cable route while measuring the depth and current.
他们花了第一天一夜的时间勘测工地，沿着电缆路线缓慢移动，同时测量深度和水流。
Conditions worsened overnight and dawn greeted them with 15-foot waves and gale-force winds, too violent for delicate cable work.
夜间情况恶化，黎明时迎接他们的是 15 英尺高的海浪和强风，这对于精细的电缆工作来说太猛烈了。
They would have to wait.
他们必须等待。
At the most basic level, a broken cable is fixed by patching the break with a piece of new cable, but because the break is miles away on the ocean floor, this must be done in several steps.
在最基本的层面上，通过用一根新电缆修补断裂处来修复断裂的电缆，但由于断裂处位于海底数英里之外，因此必须分几个步骤完成。
The first step is to cut the cable near the break (often, the cable will have been damaged but not cleanly severed, and cables are laid with so little slack that they cannot be pulled to the surface in one piece).
第一步是在断裂点附近切断电缆（通常，电缆会被损坏但没有完全切断，并且电缆敷设时非常松弛，以至于无法将它们整块拉到表面）。
This is done by dragging a bladed grapnel across the cable in a so-called “cutting drive.” The ship then swaps the bladed grapnel for a hooked one and catches one end of the severed cable, hoists it to the surface, and attaches it to a buoy.
这是通过在所谓的“切割驱动器”中拖动带刀片的抓钩穿过电缆来完成的。然后，船将带刃的抓钩换成钩状的，抓住切断的电缆的一端，将其提升到水面，并将其固定在浮标上。
Then they catch the other cable end, splice the spare cable to it, and tow the spare cable back to the first buoyed cable to complete the patch.
然后，他们抓住电缆的另一端，将备用电缆接合到其上，并将备用电缆拖回第一根浮标电缆以完成修补。
The ship is now holding a working cable but one that is considerably longer than it used to be.
船上现在有一根可用的电缆，但比以前要长得多。
This process of bringing each cable end to the surface separately means that every repair makes a cable longer — in deep water, by several miles.
将每个电缆末端分别拉到水面的过程意味着每次修复都会使电缆变长——在深水中，会延长几英里。
In order to minimize slack that could get tangled and snagged, the loop of new cable is towed to the side of the original route until it can lay taut on the ocean floor once again.
为了最大限度地减少可能缠结和卡住的松弛现象，新电缆环被拖到原来路线的一侧，直到它再次拉紧在海底。
Hatch leading below decks in the Ocean Link.
通往 Ocean Link 甲板下方的舱口。
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The interior of the Ocean Link.
海洋连线的内部。
The netted-off areas lead to the cable tanks.
网状区域通向电缆槽。
To the left is the jointing station, where cables are spliced.
左侧是接合站，用于接合电缆。
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The Ocean Link’s two powerful drum cable engines, used for paying out and reeling in cables and grapnel ropes.
Ocean Link 的两个强大的卷筒电缆发动机，用于放出和卷绕电缆和抓钩绳。
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Various tools aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的各种工具。
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Side view of a drum cable engine.
鼓式电缆发动机的侧视图。
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The Ocean Link had repaired this same stretch of cable five years earlier, which meant they had already added the slack required to bring it to the surface, no cutting required.
五年前，Ocean Link 已修复了同一段电缆，这意味着他们已经增加了将其带到地面所需的松弛度，无需切割。
It should have been sitting on the seafloor in the form of a 12-mile loop.
它应该以 12 英里的环形形式坐落在海底。
If they could catch it, Hirai reasoned, they would save time and — this was important — precious spare cable.
平井认为，如果他们能抓住它，他们就能节省时间，而且——这一点很重要——宝贵的备用电缆。
Every cable ship is stationed next to a depot with a certain amount of spare cable for each system in its jurisdiction.
每艘电缆船都驻扎在一个仓库旁边，为其管辖范围内的每个系统提供一定数量的备用电缆。
If the Ocean Link used too much on their first repair, it would take six months to manufacture and deliver enough new cable to fix the remaining faults.
如果 Ocean Link 在第一次维修时使用了过多的电缆，则需要六个月的时间来制造和交付足够的新电缆来修复剩余的故障。
By the afternoon, the Ocean Link was still plunging through heavy seas, but with the storm predicted to pass overnight, they decided to begin.
到了下午，Ocean Link 仍然在波涛汹涌的大海中猛冲，但预计风暴将在一夜之间过去，他们决定开始。
From the arsenal of yellow-enameled grapnels strapped to the foredeck, Hirai selected a “jamming-type sliding prong,” a mace-like implement comprised of two metal bars studded with foot-long barbs, well suited for dragging across rocky seabed without getting stuck.
平井从绑在前甲板上的黄色珐琅抓钩中选择了一种“干扰式滑动叉”，这是一种类似狼牙棒的工具，由两根金属杆组成，金属杆上布满了一英尺长的倒刺，非常适合拖过岩石海底而不会被卡住。
They lowered it over the bow sheave and into the water.
他们将其放入船头滑轮上方并放入水中。
The ocean floor was more than three miles down, and it took the grapnel more than six hours to hit bottom.
海底深度超过三英里，抓钩花了六个多小时才触底。
The Ocean Link began to move slowly forward.
海洋连线开始缓慢前行。
From this point onward, Hirai or another engineer would be in the cable control room — an instrument-filled command center behind the bridge — their attention fixed on the tension meter, a circular dial set into a pale green wall.
从此时开始，平井或另一位工程师将在电缆控制室（桥后面一个充满仪器的指挥中心）中，他们的注意力集中在张力计上，这是一个镶嵌在淡绿色墙壁上的圆形表盘。
The retro-looking analog gauge was less precise than a digital one but far better for intuitively conveying changes in tension than a jittery numerical readout.
外观复古的模拟仪表不如数字仪表精确，但比抖动的数字读数更能直观地传达张力变化。
The steady wavering of its arm would mean the grapnel was plowing through the gray ooze of the ocean floors.
它的手臂不断摆动意味着抓钩正在穿过海底的灰色软泥。
A staccato spike; they had hooked a rock.
断奏尖峰；他们钩住了一块岩石。
A steady rise; the cable had been caught.
稳步上升；电缆被卡住了。
Part of being an effective chief engineer, Hirai found, was the ability to read what was happening on the ocean floor from the limited information of the moving dial.
平井发现，成为一名有效的总工程师的一部分是能够从移动表盘的有限信息中读取海底发生的情况。
At 6AM the next day, the engineer on duty saw the telltale rise of a caught cable, and the Ocean Link came to a stop.
第二天早上 6 点，值班工程师发现一根被卡住的电缆升起，Ocean Link 停止了运行。
They had hooked the cable on the first run — rare in an earthquake repair — and began to reel it in.
他们在第一次运行时就挂住了电缆——这在地震修复中很少见——并开始将其卷起来。
Almost immediately, there was a sign something was amiss.
几乎立刻，就有迹象表明出了什么问题。
The tension was rising too high too fast.
紧张气氛升得太高太快了。
The cable must be pinned under debris, Hirai thought.
平井想，电缆一定是被钉在了碎片下面。
He ordered the winding engine to slow lest the cable snap, reeling in the grapnel at a grinding 10 feet per minute.
他命令卷扬机减速，以免缆绳折断，以每分钟 10 英尺的速度卷入抓钩。
The morning passed, then the afternoon, Hirai suiting up every few hours to check for radiation.
上午过去了，然后是下午，平井每隔几个小时就穿好衣服检查辐射情况。
The drum engine continued its slow rotation.
鼓式发动机继续缓慢旋转。
Night fell.
夜幕降临了。
Half past midnight, after 19 hours of winding, the cable reached the surface.
午夜半时，经过 19 个小时的缠绕，电缆到达了地面。
The grapnel came over the bow and was illuminated by the deck lights.
抓钩越过船头，被甲板灯照亮。
Hirai was horrified at what he saw.
平井被眼前的景象惊呆了。
They had caught the cable, but it was mangled unlike anything he had seen before.
他们抓住了电缆，但它被损坏了，这与他以前见过的任何东西都不一样。
Hooked around one of the grapnel’s lower barbs, the cable’s polyethylene and wire sheath had been stripped by extreme tension and sprang in coiled loops like Slinkys put through a dryer.
电缆的聚乙烯和电线护套挂在抓钩的一个下倒钩上，由于极度的张力而被剥离，并像弹力弹簧穿过烘干机一样卷成一圈。
It was a dangerous situation.
这是一个危险的情况。
There was no telling how much tension a cable this badly damaged could withstand.
没人知道如此严重损坏的电缆能承受多大的拉力。
It was like a three-mile rubber band stretched tight from the ocean floor, being tested with every rocking wave.
它就像一条三英里长的橡皮筋，从海底绷紧，经受着每一次摇摆波的考验。
If it snapped, the grapnel would fly across the deck, killing anyone it hit before smashing into the cable engine room.
如果它折断，抓钩会飞过甲板，杀死所有被它击中的人，然后撞进电缆机舱。
They had to get the cable off the ship, but doing so involved working closely with the explosive bundle hovering, taut, above the deck.
他们必须将电缆从船上取下来，但这样做需要与悬停在甲板上方、绷紧的爆炸物束密切合作。
First, crew members lashed chains to either end of the cable to take the tension off the grapnel, which they then swapped for a version with a sharp blade at its center, typically used for severing cables on the ocean floor.
首先，船员将链条绑在电缆的两端，以减轻抓钩的张力，然后他们将其换成中心带有锋利刀片的版本，通常用于切断海底的电缆。
This done, they evacuated the foredeck.
完成后，他们疏散了前甲板。
The grapnel, cable, and chains were slowly lowered back over the prow and into the sea, the ship maneuvering delicately to minimize any sudden changes in tension.
抓钩、缆绳和链条慢慢地放回船头上方并落入海中，船舶巧妙地操纵以尽量减少张力的突然变化。
Once the cable was safely beneath the waves, they released the chains.
一旦电缆安全地落入海浪下，他们就松开了链条。
Suddenly, pulled tight over the blade, the cable split and sank back to the ocean floor.
突然，用力拉紧刀片，电缆断裂并沉回海底。
For Hirai, relief at a disaster averted was soon followed by foreboding.
对平井来说，灾难避免后的欣慰很快就伴随着不祥的预感。
The landslides created by the earthquake must have been far greater than he had imagined, dragging the cable for miles, mangling it, and burying it beneath who knew how much debris.
地震造成的山体滑坡肯定比他想象的要大得多，电缆被拖曳了数英里，被毁坏，并被埋在不知道有多少碎片之下。
He couldn’t think how to proceed.
他不知道该如何继续。
The cable tension meter and other indicators in the Ocean Link’s cable control room.
Ocean Link电缆控制室内的电缆张力计和其他指示器。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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D ebates Debates about the future of cable repair have become a staple of industry events.
辩论 关于电缆修复未来的辩论已成为行业活动的主要内容。
They typically begin with a few key facts: the ships are aging; the people are aging; and it’s unclear where the money will come from to turn things around.
他们通常从几个关键事实开始：船舶正在老化；人们正在老龄化；目前尚不清楚扭转局面所需的资金将从何而来。
For much of the 20th century, cable maintenance wasn’t a distinct business; it was just something giant, vertically integrated telecom monopolies had to do in order to function.
在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，电缆维护并不是一项独特的业务。这只是巨大的、垂直整合的电信垄断企业为了运作而必须做的事情。
As they started laying coaxial cables in the 1950s, they decided to pool resources.
当他们在 20 世纪 50 年代开始铺设同轴电缆时，他们决定集中资源。
Rather than each company having its own repair vessel mostly sitting idle, they divided the oceans into zones, each with a few designated repair ships.
他们并不是每家公司都有自己的维修船大部分闲置，而是将海洋划分为多个区域，每个区域都有几艘指定的维修船。
When the telcos were split up at the turn of the century, their marine divisions were sold off.
当电信公司在世纪之交分拆时，它们的海洋部门被出售。
Cable & Wireless Marine became Global Marine.
大东电报海事公司更名为全球海事公司。
AT&T’s division is now the New Jersey-based SubCom.
AT&T 的部门现在是位于新泽西州的 SubCom。
(Both are now owned by private equity companies; KCS remains a subsidiary of KDDI.) The zone system continued, now governed by contracts between cable owners and ship operators.
（两者现在均由私募股权公司拥有；KCS 仍然是 KDDI 的子公司。）区域系统继续存在，现在由电缆所有者和船舶运营商之间的合同管辖。
Cable owners can sign up with a nonprofit cooperative, like the Atlantic Cable Maintenance & Repair Agreement, and pay an annual fee plus a day rate for repairs.
电缆所有者可以与非营利合作社（例如大西洋电缆维护和维修协议）签约，并支付年费和日费维修费。
In exchange, the zone’s three ships — a Global Marine vessel in Portland, UK, another in Curaçao, and an Orange Marine vessel in Brest, France — will stand ready to sail out within 24 hours of being notified of a fault.
作为交换，该区域的三艘船——一艘位于英国波特兰的 Global Marine 船、另一艘位于库拉索岛的 Global Marine 船以及一艘位于法国布雷斯特的 Orange Marine 船——将在收到故障通知后 24 小时内做好启航准备。
This system has been able to cope with the day-to-day cadence of cable breaks, but margins are thin and contracts are short-term, making it difficult to convince investors to spend $100 million on a new vessel.
该系统能够应对日常的电缆断裂问题，但利润微薄且合同期限较短，因此很难说服投资者花费 1 亿美元购买新船。
“The main issue for me in the industry has to do with hyperscalers coming in and saying we need to reduce costs every year,” said Wilkie, the chair of the ACMA, using the industry term for tech giants like Google and Meta.
ACMA 主席 Wilkie 表示：“对我来说，这个行业面临的主要问题与超大规模企业的到来有关，他们说我们需要每年降低成本。”他使用了谷歌和 Meta 等科技巨头的行业术语。
“We’d all like to have maintenance cheaper, but the cost of running a ship doesn’t actually change much from year to year.
“我们都希望维护成本更便宜，但船舶的运营成本实际上每年都没有太大变化。
It goes up, actually.
事实上，它上涨了。
So there has been a severe lack of investment in new ships.”
因此，新船投资严重缺乏。”
At the same time, there are more cables to repair than ever, also partly a result of the tech giants entering the industry.
与此同时，需要维修的电缆比以往任何时候都多，这在一定程度上也是科技巨头进入该行业的结果。
Starting around 2016, tech companies that previously purchased bandwidth from telcos began pouring billions of dollars into cable systems of their own, seeking to ensure their cloud services were always available and content libraries synced.
从 2016 年左右开始，之前从电信公司购买带宽的科技公司开始向自己的有线系统投入数十亿美元，以确保其云服务始终可用且内容库同步。
The result has been not just a boom in new cables but a change in the topology of the internet.
其结果不仅是新电缆的蓬勃发展，而且还改变了互联网的拓扑结构。
“In the old days we connected population centers,” said Constable, the former Huawei Marine executive.
“过去，我们连接人口中心，”前华为海洋高管康斯特布尔说。
“Now we connect data centers.
“现在我们连接数据中心。
Eighty percent of traffic crossing the Atlantic is probably machines talking to machines.”
跨越大西洋的交通量的百分之八十可能是机器与机器的对话。”
A cable ship repairing a transpacific cable in 1972.
1972 年，一艘电缆船正在修复跨太平洋电缆。
Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images Loading .
照片由费尔法克斯媒体通过盖蒂图片社拍摄。
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Maintenance providers regard these changes with ambivalence.
维护提供商对这些变化抱有矛盾的态度。
The cable boom means there will be no shortage of cables to fix, but it also means a future of negotiating with a handful of tech giants that can use their tremendous buying power to squeeze ship operators further.
电缆的繁荣意味着将不会缺少需要修复的电缆，但这也意味着未来将与少数科技巨头进行谈判，这些巨头可以利用其巨大的购买力进一步挤压船舶运营商。
Market forces pose one challenge; geopolitics another.
市场力量构成了一项挑战；地缘政治另一个。
Tensions with China, including the increasing difficulty of getting permission to repair cables in the contested waters of the South China Sea, are contributing to decisions to route new systems through the Philippines and other less direct passages.
与中国的紧张关系，包括在南海有争议的水域获得修复电缆的许可越来越困难，正在促使人们决定通过菲律宾和其他不太直接的通道铺设新系统。
Conflict in the Middle East has the industry looking nervously at the Red Sea, an infamous cable chokepoint: in February, a freighter struck by Houthi rockets dragged its anchor across three crucial connections between Asia and Europe, degrading connectivity and raising the frightening prospect of conducting repairs under fire.
中东的冲突让业界紧张地关注红海，这是一个臭名昭著的电缆阻塞点：2月份，一艘被胡塞武装火箭弹击中的货轮拖着锚跨越了亚洲和欧洲之间的三个关键连接点，导致连通性下降，并增加了在火力下进行维修的可怕前景。
The Red Sea vulnerability has in turn renewed interest in an Arctic route, made potentially feasible by melting sea ice, though, for years, one of the fatal flaws of this proposal has been the question of who would repair such a cable, there being no ice-capable maintenance vessels.
红海的脆弱性反过来又重新引起了人们对北极航线的兴趣，该航线通过融化海冰而可能成为可行，尽管多年来，该提议的致命缺陷之一一直是由谁来修复这样一条电缆的问题，因为没有能够冰的维护船。
These and other recent events, like the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosion, have led governments to take a greater interest in cable security, often focusing on the specter of a deliberate attack.
这些事件以及其他最近发生的事件（例如 2022 年北溪管道爆炸）导致各国政府对电缆安全产生了更大的兴趣，通常关注蓄意攻击的幽灵。
Late last year, NATO convened a symposium on undersea infrastructure and the future of “seabed warfare,” while the UK commissioned naval vessels to patrol their subsea connections.
去年年底，北约召开了一次关于海底基础设施和“海底战争”未来的研讨会，而英国则委托海军舰艇巡逻其海底连接。
Meanwhile, the European Union , India, and other governments have proposed investing in maintenance vessels directly.
与此同时，欧盟、印度等政府也提议直接投资维修船。
“The amount of ships is relatively limited, and there are a number of places where it could get critical,” said Christian Bueger, the lead author of a 2022 EU Parliament study on threats to subsea data infrastructure.
2022 年欧盟议会关于海底数据基础设施威胁的研究的主要作者克里斯蒂安·布格 (Christian Bueger) 表示：“船舶数量相对有限，而且在许多地方可能会变得至关重要。”
As part of the study, he visited a cable repair ship in Cape Town, South Africa.
作为研究的一部分，他参观了南非开普敦的一艘电缆维修船。
It was old, he said, with oily, clanging machinery demanding hard physical labor — the opposite of the clean digital space he associated with the internet.
他说，那里很旧，机器油腻、叮当作响，需要艰苦的体力劳动——这与他与互联网联系在一起的干净的数字空间相反。
One of his recommendations was that governments figure out a way to invest in cable fleets rather than rely on companies focused on cost cutting and efficiency.
他的建议之一是，政府想办法投资电缆队伍，而不是依赖专注于削减成本和提高效率的公司。
The situation of SubCom illustrates the industry’s strange moment.
SubCom 的情况说明了该行业的奇怪时刻。
The company has been withdrawing from maintenance work, according to industry sources, in order to focus on more lucrative installations, many of which are for Google.
据业内人士透露，该公司已停止维护工作，以便专注于更有利可图的安装，其中许多是为谷歌服务的。
At the same time, the company is increasingly intertwined with the US government , which waged a pressure campaign to help SubCom beat China’s HMN Tech for the contract to build a major Asia-to-Europe cable, according to Reuters .
与此同时，据路透社报道，该公司与美国政府的关系日益密切，美国政府发起了一场施压活动，以帮助 SubCom 击败中国的 HMN Tech，获得建设一条主要的亚洲至欧洲电缆的合同。
SubCom also recently won a contract to operate the US’s first “cable security fleet.”
SubCom 最近还赢得了运营美国第一支“电缆安全车队”的合同。
Like the involvement of the tech giants, industry veterans regard this new government interest with ambivalence.
就像科技巨头的参与一样，行业资深人士对政府的这一新利益也抱有矛盾的态度。
More funding would be welcome, but the world of subsea cables is one of unforgiving tradeoffs, and it’s easy for well-intentioned policies to go awry.
更多资金将受到欢迎，但海底电缆世界是一个无情的权衡领域之一，善意的政策很容易出错。
One often proposed solution, for example, is to corral cables into protected corridors, which can make them easier to guard against malicious actors but also makes it possible for a single landslide to take them all out at once.
例如，一种经常提出的解决方案是将电缆集中到受保护的走廊中，这可以使它们更容易防范恶意行为者，但也可以使一次山体滑坡一次将它们全部摧毁。
Secrecy, too, is a double-edged sword.
保密也是一把双刃剑。
Classifying cable locations might make them more difficult to attack while worsening exposure to what is their actual greatest threat: fishing accidents and other forms of human negligence.
对电缆位置进行分类可能会使它们更难受到攻击，同时也会加剧它们面临的最大威胁：捕鱼事故和其他形式的人为疏忽。
Greater secrecy could also heighten the tension between the industry’s near-total obscurity and its need for new recruits.
更大的保密性还可能加剧该行业几乎完全默默无闻与其对新员工的需求之间的紧张关系。
Ships are a relatively easy problem to solve; they just take money.
船舶是一个相对容易解决的问题；他们只拿钱。
People take years to train.
人们需要数年的时间来训练。
The submarine cable world has never been particularly public.
海底电缆世界从来都不是特别公开的。
The industry is small and competitive, and cable owners don’t want their cables to get a reputation for breaking, so they bind maintenance providers with nondisclosure agreements.
该行业规模较小且竞争激烈，电缆所有者不希望他们的电缆获得断裂的声誉，因此他们与维护提供商签订保密协议。
The result is that in the rare case that a fault reaches public awareness, ship operators almost never talk about it.
结果是，在极少数故障引起公众注意的情况下，船舶运营商几乎从不谈论它。
Add in national security concerns, and the result is a code of silence that pervades the entire business.
再加上国家安全问题，结果就是整个行业都保持沉默。
(Which is also why many of the sources in this story are “industry veterans” or other anonymous descriptors.) The industry has begun to recognize that this poses a recruiting challenge.
（这也是为什么这个故事中的许多消息来源都是“行业资深人士”或其他匿名描述者。）行业已经开始认识到这带来了招聘挑战。
In 2022, the industry organization SubOptic gathered six cable employees in their 20s and 30s for a panel on the future of the industry.
2022 年，行业组织 SubOptic 聚集了 6 名 20 多岁和 30 多岁的有线电视员工，就行业的未来进行了小组讨论。
Most of them had stumbled into their jobs inadvertently after college, and the consensus was that the industry needed to be much better about raising public awareness, especially among the young.
他们中的大多数人在大学毕业后无意中找到了工作，人们的共识是，该行业需要更好地提高公众意识，尤其是年轻人的意识。
“I don’t know if anyone saw, but during the pandemic, submarine cables actually went viral on TikTok,” said one panelist, a young cable engineer from Vodafone.
“我不知道是否有人看到，但在大流行期间，海底电缆实际上在 TikTok 上疯传，”一位来自沃达丰的年轻电缆工程师说道。
“People didn’t know they existed, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, they were viral.
“人们不知道它们的存在，然后突然之间，它们突然像病毒一样传播开来。
I think it’s engaging with youth and children through their own avenues — yes, you can have science museums and things like that, but they are online, they are on their iPads, they’re on their phones.”
我认为这是通过年轻人和儿童自己的途径与他们互动——是的，你可以拥有科学博物馆之类的东西，但他们是在线的，他们在 iPad 上，他们在手机上。”
“We’ve got some pretty senior decision-makers and influencers in the subsea cable industry here,” said one audience member.
“我们这里有一些海底电缆行业的资深决策者和影响者，”一位观众说。
“Did any of us know that we went viral on TikTok?” he asked, to laughter.
“我们有人知道我们在 TikTok 上走红了吗？”他问道，大笑起来。
“As this panel rightfully said upfront, it’s not that we have a brand problem,” said another audience member, “we just don’t have a brand at all.”
另一位观众表示：“正如这个小组一开始就正确地指出的那样，我们并不是有品牌问题，而是我们根本没有品牌。”
I t It took the Ocean Link a month to complete its first repair.
Ocean Link 花了一个月的时间才完成第一次维修。
Failed grapnel runs, fishing gear entanglements, repeated radiation checks, and storms: it had been among the most difficult repairs Hirai had faced.
抓钩运行失败、渔具纠缠、反复的辐射检查和风暴：这是平井所面临的最困难的维修工作之一。
They continued to work through the spring, but by June, they faced a dilemma.
他们整个春天都在继续工作，但到了六月，他们面临着困境。
Many of the remaining faults lay 50 miles off the coast of Chiba, deep in the Japan Trench, where eight different cable lines passed near and sometimes over each other.
剩下的许多断层位于距千叶海岸 50 英里的日本海沟深处，八条不同的电缆线相互靠近，有时甚至重叠。
It was a cable chokepoint, and a landslide must have crashed down and wrecked them all.
这是一个电缆阻塞点，一定是山体滑坡崩塌并摧毁了它们。
It would be difficult to catch one without cutting its neighbor.
要想抓住一只而不砍伤它的邻居是很困难的。
Even if they could, it wasn’t clear they had enough spare cable to fix each fault individually, with all the loops of slack they would need to add to bring the cables to the surface.
即使他们可以，也不清楚他们是否有足够的备用电缆来单独修复每个故障，因为他们需要添加所有松弛环才能将电缆带到地面。
Hirai decided the only solution was to abandon the tangled mess and lay a new system on top of it.
平井认为唯一的解决办法就是放弃混乱的局面，并在其之上建立一个新的系统。
It would mean abandoning miles of cable as well as a branching unit: a 2,000-pound device that splits one cable into two different lines going to two destinations.
这意味着放弃数英里长的电缆和分支单元：一种重 2,000 磅的设备，可将一根电缆分成两条不同的线路，通向两个目的地。
But by reducing the number of loops, it would reduce the amount of cable required.
但通过减少环路数量，可以减少所需的电缆数量。
Even then, it wasn’t clear they had enough.
即便如此，仍不清楚他们已经受够了。
They did, however, have a lot of small bits of cable they had been careful to salvage during previous repairs — three miles here, five miles there.
然而，他们确实有很多在之前的维修过程中小心抢救的小电缆——这里三英里，那里五英里。
With a lot of work, they could be spliced together.
经过大量的工作，它们可以拼接在一起。
Takashi Kurokawa had joined KCS 12 years earlier, after hearing about the company from a teacher while in engineering school.
黑川隆 (Takashi Kurokawa) 12 年前在工程学校时从一位老师那里听说了这家公司后加入了 KCS。
Unlike many of his colleagues who moved roles every few years, after Kurokawa learned to joint, he just kept jointing.
与许多每隔几年就换一次角色的同事不同，黑川学会联合后，就一直联合。
He enjoyed the way jointing’s strict rules and standards for success created a structure within which he could push himself to attain ever greater precision and speed.
他很享受关节运动严格的规则和成功标准所创造的结构，在这个结构中他可以推动自己达到更高的精度和速度。
Takashi Kurokawa preparing to splice a fiber.
黑川隆准备熔接光纤。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The work is extraordinarily delicate.
作品异常精致。
Cables must be stripped of their polyurethane sheaths, copper conducting tubes, wire armor, and enamel coating until the clear glass threads themselves are exposed.
必须剥掉电缆的聚氨酯护套、铜导线管、铠装线和搪瓷涂层，直到露出透明玻璃丝。
Kurokawa then takes a glass strand from each cable, cleans them in a sonic bath (touching them risks damage and splinters), cleaves their ends at perfect right angles, and places them inside a black toaster-sized box called a fusion splicer, their ends almost but not quite touching.
然后，黑川从每根电缆中取出一根玻璃丝，在声波浴中清洁它们（接触它们可能会造成损坏和碎片），以完美的直角劈开它们的末端，然后将它们放入一个称为熔接机的黑色烤面包机大小的盒子中，它们的末端几乎但不完全接触。
In an instant, the device aligns the ends and zaps an electric arc between them, melting the glass together.
瞬间，该设备将两端对齐并在两端之间产生电弧，将玻璃熔化在一起。
Kurokawa then winds the newly spliced fiber into a metal tube called a joint box and does it all again for the next fiber strand.
然后，黑川将新拼接的光纤缠绕到一个称为接头盒的金属管中，并为下一根光纤束重复上述操作。
The entire process can take 20 hours, with Kurokawa and his team working in shifts.
整个过程可能需要 20 个小时，黑川和他的团队轮班工作。
Every step demands hunched, jeweler-like focus as they seek perfect precision — not in a seismically isolated clean room but in the belly of a rocking ship.
每一步都需要弯腰驼背，像珠宝商一样专注，因为他们追求完美的精度——不是在隔震的洁净室中，而是在摇晃的船腹中。
Each joint is expected to function untouched under crushing pressure for at least 25 years.
每个接头预计可在挤压压力下完好无损地运行至少 25 年。
To speed matters, they decided to assemble what they could in port at Yokohama, with the Ocean Link moored and relatively stable.
为了加快速度，他们决定在横滨港口集结尽可能多的物资，此时海洋联线已停泊且相对稳定。
Working in shifts over 10 days, Kurokawa and his colleagues spliced 10 joints, four repeaters, and a branching unit — assembling a three-part, 100-mile system from the spare bits of cable they had on hand.
黑川和他的同事在 10 天的时间里轮班工作，拼接了 10 个接头、四个中继器和一个分支单元，用他们手头上的备用电缆组装了一个由三部分组成的、长达 100 英里的系统。
At night, he dreamed of winding cables back and forth between storage tanks to get at the segments he needed.
晚上，他梦想着在储罐之间来回缠绕电缆，以到达他需要的部分。
On June 26th, they tested the apparatus.
6月26日，他们对设备进行了测试。
It worked.
它起作用了。
They set sail the same day, with no estimate for how long it would take.
他们在同一天起航，没有估计需要多长时间。
Hirai had mapped out the plan to a meticulous 23 steps.
平井一夫将计划精心制定为 23 个步骤。
They began by severing the cable running from the branching unit to Murayama in the south, catching the landward end, splicing the new cable to it, and sailing northward to the point where they planned to deposit the new branching unit.
他们首先切断从分支单元延伸到南部村山的电缆，抓住向陆地的一端，将新电缆接合到其上，然后向北航行到他们计划放置新分支单元的地点。
There, they attached the cable to a buoy and lowered it into the ocean.
在那里，他们将电缆连接到浮标上并将其放入海中。
Then they were off to the northern cable, which they caught, spliced, and pulled back to the buoy.
然后他们前往北边的电缆，抓住电缆，拼接电缆，并将其拉回到浮标上。
It took 12 days to get here, and now came the difficult part.
花了12天才到达这里，现在困难的部分来了。
The cable jointing station aboard the Ocean Link.
Ocean Link 上的电缆连接站。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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Vise for holding cables during repairs.
用于在维修期间固定电缆的虎钳。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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A cable is mounted in a vise and stripped to reveal the fiber strands at its core.
将电缆安装在虎钳中并剥去其芯部的纤维束。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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Each fiber is coated in colored enamel so workers can tell which is which.
每根纤维都涂有彩色珐琅，因此工人们可以分辨出哪根纤维是哪根。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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Kurokawa selects a fiber to splice.
黑川选择光纤进行熔接。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The colored enamel coating of the fiber is stripped, revealing the glass itself.
纤维的彩色珐琅涂层被剥离，露出玻璃本身。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The glass fiber.
玻璃纤维。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The fiber is cleaned in an ultrasound bath.
光纤在超声波浴中进行清洁。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The fiber is cleaved at a right angle.
光纤以直角劈开。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The fiber is placed inside the splicing machine.
光纤被放置在熔接机内。
The stripping, cleaning, and cleaving process is repeated with the other fiber to be spliced and placed end to end with the first strand inside the machine.
对要熔接的其他光纤重复剥离、清洁和切割过程，并与机器内的第一股首尾相连。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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After the two fibers are fused together, the machine pulls the two sides of the cable to test the strength of the splice.
两根光纤熔接在一起后，机器拉动光缆的两侧以测试熔接的强度。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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A plastic sheath is placed over the splice to reinforce it.
将塑料护套放置在接头上以对其进行加固。
Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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Each completed fiber splice is placed inside a sealed enclosure called a “joint box.” Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge Loading .
每个完成的光纤接头都放置在称为“接头盒”的密封外壳内。由 Go Takayama 为 The Verge 拍摄的照片正在加载。
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The final splice is the most precarious moment of the repair.
最后的拼接是修复过程中最危险的时刻。
On the first splice, the ship can pivot 360 degrees around the dangling cable in order to angle into the wind and waves and maintain position.
在第一个接头上，船舶可以围绕悬挂的电缆旋转 360 度，以便适应风浪并保持位置。
But on the second splice, there are two cables hanging off the prow, and the ship’s maneuverability is far more restricted should the weather turn foul.
但在第二个接头上，有两根电缆悬挂在船头，如果天气恶劣，船舶的机动性会受到更大的限制。
With the branching unit, they had to complete two final splices — one for each leg — then deposit the whole apparatus to the ocean floor intact.
对于分支单元，他们必须完成两个最终拼接——每条腿一个——然后将整个设备完好无损地放置到海底。
This, the Ocean Link crew knew, would be its own challenge.
Ocean Link 工作人员知道，这将是其自身的挑战。
A 2,000-pound weight dangling for miles through the water column can do funny things.
一个 2000 磅重的重物在水柱中悬挂数英里会产生有趣的事情。
In 2008, the Ocean Link was called to recover a branching unit that another cable ship accidentally dropped into the Japan Trench while trying to deploy it.
2008 年，Ocean Link 受命回收另一艘电缆船在试图部署时意外掉入日本海沟的分支单元。
With a typhoon approaching, they caught the cable, brought up the unit, and fashioned a webbing loincloth-like harness between the unit’s two legs for additional support before lowering it back to the bottom.
随着台风的临近，他们抓住了电缆，将设备吊起，并在设备的两条腿之间制作了一个类似腰带的安全带，以提供额外的支撑，然后再将其放回底部。
They would again be working in deep water — nearly four miles — but what troubled Hirai was the current.
他们将再次在深水中工作——近四英里——但困扰平井的是水流。
A powerful river of warm water called the Kuroshio Current snakes unpredictably up from the south along Japan’s coast, and it happened to be racing through the worksite at four knots, aquamarine and glittering in the summer sun.
一条被称为黑潮洋流的强大暖水河从南部沿着日本海岸蜿蜒而上，碰巧以四节的速度穿过工地，在夏日的阳光下闪闪发光。
The Ocean Link would have to constantly adjust its thrusters to maintain position against the stream and prevent the branching unit from banging against the hull as it descended.
Ocean Link 必须不断调整推进器，以保持与水流相对的位置，并防止分支单元在下降时撞击船体。
But the weather was fair and the swell was light, so they decided to proceed.
但天气晴朗，海浪不大，所以他们决定继续前进。
Hirai, Kurokawa, Kobayashi, and more than a dozen other members of the crew assembled on the foredeck.
平井、黑川、小林以及其他十几名船员聚集在前甲板上。
The white-painted prow glared bright in the sun as the branching unit was brought out, a metal tube with two black accordion legs that tapered to slender cables.
当分支单元被拿出来时，涂成白色的船头在阳光下闪闪发光，这是一根金属管，有两条黑色的手风琴腿，逐渐变细，形成细长的电缆。
They had drilled this maneuver before leaving port.
他们在离开港口之前就进行了这次演习。
Clad in hard hats, the crew gingerly placed it on a metal dolly and strapped it down.
工作人员戴着安全帽，小心翼翼地把它放在金属小车上，并用安全带绑住。
Hirai tied yellow webbing between its legs to form a harness and affixed a safety rope.
平井在它的两腿之间系上黄色织带，形成安全带，并系上安全绳。
Kurokawa stood by the prow, watching the unit as it was rolled toward him.
黑川站在船头，看着这艘船滚向他。
Kobayashi stood back by the drum engine, watching the cable unspool and worrying what would happen if it snapped, envisioning weeks of splicing plunging to the ocean floor.
小林站在鼓式发动机后面，看着电缆解开，担心如果电缆断裂会发生什么，想象着数周后的拼接会沉入海底。
The crew of the Ocean Link in 2011.
2011 年，Ocean Link 号的船员。
Photo by Mitsuyoshi Hirai Loading .
摄影：Mitsuyoshi Hirai 加载中。
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The ship’s thrusters hummed and moved the Ocean Link ever so slowly backward.
飞船的推进器发出嗡嗡声，让海洋连接号缓慢地向后移动。
One end of the branching unit lifted off the dolly as it was pulled up onto the bow sheave.
当分支装置被拉到弓形滑轮上时，分支装置的一端脱离了小车。
To an observer, the ship would look nearly stationary as the current flowed around it.
对于观察者来说，当水流在船周围流动时，船看起来几乎是静止的。
The unit went over the top of the prow and descended, hanging from its harness, until it slipped below the surface and out of sight.
该装置越过船头顶部并下降，悬挂在安全带上，直到滑入水面以下并消失在视线之外。
It was August by the time the Ocean Link finished the branching unit repair.
当 Ocean Link 完成分支单元维修时，已经是八月了。
Other ships, deeming the crisis at Fukushima stable enough to work, had arrived to help.
其他船只认为福岛危机已经足够稳定，可以继续工作，因此也赶来提供帮助。
Hirai sometimes advised them on the area’s tricky currents and rugged bathymetry, but mostly, they stayed out of each other’s way; the last thing you want to do is tangle two grapnels.
平井有时会就该地区棘手的海流和崎岖的水深测量向他们提供建议，但大多数情况下，他们不会互相妨碍。你最不想做的就是把两个抓钩缠在一起。
The final repair was an easy one.
最后的修复很简单。
They had to finish the job that had been interrupted by the earthquake nearly five months earlier.
他们必须完成近五个月前因地震而中断的工作。
They returned to the site where they had made their rushed escape, deployed the submersible, and buried the rest of the cable beneath the sand.
他们回到了匆忙逃生的地点，部署了潜水器，并将剩余的电缆埋在沙子下面。
The repair was so close to port that there was no time to celebrate during their return, nor was there much of a mood to do so.
修复工作离港口太近了，他们回来时没有时间庆祝，也没有太多心情庆祝。
The earthquake had caused more than 20 faults, and the Ocean Link had repaired 11 of them.
地震已造成20多个断层，Ocean Link已修复其中11个。
It had taken 154 days of continuous work.
连续工作了154天。
They had missed a time of national mourning, school graduations, harvest celebrations, and the slow resumption of normalcy.
他们错过了全国哀悼、学校毕业、丰收庆典和缓慢恢复正常的时期。
After they docked, the crew departed for their homes.
靠岸后，船员们纷纷回家。
Hirai stayed behind to finish writing his final daily report, then made for home as well.
平井留下来写完最后的每日报告，然后也回家了。
As he rode the train back to Yokosuka, he watched his fellow passengers absorbed in their phones.
当他乘坐火车返回横须贺时，他看到其他乘客全神贯注于手机。
We completed the job, he thought with satisfaction, and they have no idea .
我们完成了工作，他满意地想，而他们却不知道。