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A massive Chinese cargo ship suspected of deliberately cutting some fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea has left the area amid an ongoing international investigation. Cables like these, which form the veins that connect the global internet, have been at the center of suspicious maritime activity in recent years, resulting in an increase in outages. In this case, the ship lay motionless in the Kattegat between Sweden and Denmark for months while investigators from multiple countries boarded to search for clues. That changed on Saturday Satellite photos showed the ship sailing north and leave the straight. The Swedish authorities, who led the investigation, told The Guardian this week that Chinese officials rejected their recent request to allow prosecutors to board the ship, despite previously agreeing to fully cooperate. Chinese officials now say the ship left to “ensure the physical and mental well-being of the crew.”
Investigators claim the ship dragged the anchors for more than 100 miles
On November 17, a major internet connection connecting Finland and Germany suddenly went offline. Another nearby link connecting Sweden to Lithuania reportedly failed just a day later. Swedish researchers quickly attributed the outages to a few severed submarine fiber optic cables. There are hundreds of these cables along the seabed around the world. Together they form the basis of the global Internet and are responsible for facilitating it an estimated $10 trillion in daily global financial transactions.
It is not unusual for these cables, some of which are almost forty years old, to suffer damage. This can happen due to neutral wear, natural disastersan accident anchor falls from ships, or even shark bites. But almost immediately, investigators suspected that this particular case was not an accident. Officials from Sweden and Denmark have their sights set on a huge Chinese bulk ship carrying Russian fertilizer called the Yi Peng 3. The 225-meter ship, operated by a company called Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, reportedly left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on November 15. It then traveled almost the entire length of the Baltic Sea at the exact moment the two cables were cut. The ship was ordered to stop so that a team of researchers from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany could board.
An initial investigation by Swedish officials, first reported by The Wall Street Journalclaims the ship’s transponder was disabled around the same time as the internet outage. The ship is then said to have dragged its anchor 160 kilometers along the seabed. During that time, the ship continued to sail even though the anchor slowed its speed considerably, a point they say makes an ‘accidental’ anchor drop unlikely.
“Nobody believes these cables were cut accidentally,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said last month. according to The New York Times.
Instead, investigators suspect that the ship’s captain may have taken clues from Russian intelligence officers. A spokesperson for the Kremlin press service refuted this theory last month, calling the accusations “absurd, [and] not substantiated.” The ship shocked researchers when it left the strait this weekend after weeks of cooperation.
Mysterious cable damage is on the rise
Cable cutting is activated during a reported an increase in suspicious activity near submarine cables in recent years. Last spring, Taiwanese officials accused China of doing so deliberately order ships to cut two submarine cables connecting the Mastu Islands to the rest of the world. China has denied these allegations. Not long after, Estonian prosecutors claim a Hong Kong-registered container called the “NewNew Polar Bear” damaged a pair of submarine cables connecting them to Finland. A search revealed an anchor found on the seabed that officials said belonged to the Chinese ship.
Whether intentional or not, the damage has led to renewed interest from countries around the world in improving cable security. Sixteen countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, Finland, France and Japan, signed a joint declaration by the United Nations earlier this year it called for a “shared global approach” to improve the reliability, interoperability and recoverability of submarine cables. Denmark added its name to that statement just days after the most recent cable cuts.
These efforts could help prevent future damage, but the Yi Peng 3’s abrupt departure from the East Sea means we may never know for sure whether or not this latest cable fiasco was intentional.