FEATURE THE 2020 OCEAN SCIENCE REVOLUTION USING SUBMARINE FIBER OPTIC CABLES BY FRANK C. DIMARIA
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t’s June 14, 2005 and I’m sitting in my Newport Beach/ occur globally every day. Some on land and many in the Balboa Island, California apartment watching “The Ofocean and undetected. A random ocean earthquake and fice” for the first time… (How’s that for a blast from the subsequent tsunami is a “sleeping giant” capable of again past)! An emergency alert warning comes across the TV producing a global catastrophe. For the record, what resultscreen.... “TSUNAMI WARNING!! Evacuate Balboa ed in 2005 at Balboa Island was a 6-inch wave that brought Island and the surrounding area immediately!” This was to light how much we were in the dark. Little did I know, everyone worst fear... our minds were fresh with the images that in the future, I would be part of a new company of the catastrophic event of Dec 2004 where Indonesia and that would repurpose Out-Of-Service (OOS) submarine other countries that border the Indian Ocean was struck cables to enable the scientific community to build a more unknowingly by a huge tidal wave killing 230,000 people. robust reporting earthquake and tsunami early detection Evacuation panic ensued in southern California, with 3-hour system. The company is called Submarine Cable Salvage, traffic jams and people running for the Newport hills and INC or SCS (owned & operated by Ocean Networks) and even others climbing on their roof and waiting in fear. Not a real good example of how to Place Year Mag H (m) Deaths orderly avoid chaos but then that’s the point of Chile 1960 9.5 25 6,000 this article …How have we changed since 2005 Alaska 1964 9.2 30 132 – specifically in the area of ocean science and Mindanao 1976 7.9 9 7,800 how we will look to our oceans in the future for better warning signs and create early warning Tumaco 1979 8.1 6 350 systems? This is not a scientific article but a Hokkaido 1993 7.8 30 250 commoner’s view of the infrastructure that’s Papua New Guinea 1998 7.1 15 2,200 in place and developing and how the scientific Sumatra 2004 9.2 33 230,000 community is working hard to help prevent the Solomon Island 2007 8.1 12 52 next global disaster…and the look ahead. Here is a brief recap of the world events that Samoa 2009 8.1 14 192 show the destructive power that tsunamis have Tohoku 2011 9 10 19,000 had on the people of the world. Palu 2018 7.5 7 2,778 There are hundreds of earthquakes that
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis)
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