Summary
Taiwan’s coastguard detained a Togolese-flagged cargo ship with a Chinese crew after an undersea communications cable connecting Taiwan to Penghu was cut.
Authorities suspect a possible “grey zone” act—hostile interference short of warfare—by China but have not ruled out an accident.
The ship, which initially ignored radio contact, was intercepted and escorted to port. Taiwan has been monitoring Chinese-linked vessels under flags of convenience due to previous cable damage incidents.
Chunghwa Telecom activated a backup cable, preventing communication disruptions.
I’m not an expert, but that may not be entirely feasible. Accidents happen. Even if you want to designate no anchoring zones, what about in a bad situation? What if the cable is new and the boat is using maps a year or two old? Do the maps those boats use even include these cables so they can even try to avoid them? Who enforces it in international waters? It’s messy.
People underestimate the sheer size and volume of ship anchors.
It’s not the hooky bit that ye olde sailors tattooed on their arm that holds the ship like a fishhook.
It’s the literal hundred metres of VERY heavy chain that does it. Unless it’s your first time behind the wheel it’s impossible not to notice you’re dragging an anchor.
This is the scale we’re talking about.
Damage is damage. You are not getting away cutting someone car by chainsaw and saying “oh it was an accident. It so unfeasible to follow all those safety rules”
You can’t see the cables from the surface. If the maps don’t include them, which was a point I already made, they may have no idea at all what they’ve done, and they may not have any reasonable way at all to predict it. There’s almost 200 million square miles of ocean. How likely do you think it is to drop anchor on a cable? It’s not a reasonable concern a huge portion of the time, and, again, I’m not convinced they know they’re there.
Is there even any reason to be dragging your anchor? Isn’t the whole point that you put down the anchor when you are trying to stay still?
You can drag an anchor when you’re trying to stay still and the anchor just isn’t, well, anchored; my understanding is that bad weather can cause that.
But some of the above incidents I listed are ships that have their anchor released and are just continuing to sail along while apparently unaware of the fact that they’re hauling an anchor right through the submarine cables that they cross. Like, they aren’t victims of bad weather+bad luck. They’re just screwing up.
So they should pay for it, with jail time if need be.
Negligence isn’t an excuse, it’s a crime.
Sure, but will the ocean let your boat stay still? Waves get really big, and storms can lead to intense winds. I don’t see it as entirely unreasonable for these accidents to happen. They should be rare, but with the volume of ocean traffic we have, they kind of are. That isn’t to say we couldn’t do better, but I’m not sure this is a problem that can be 100% solved.
Sure but when you have people dragging their anchor for 300km it certainly seems like negligence at best