WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE THOSE PESKY CABLESHIPS? BY REBECCA SPENCE
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021 is off to an excellent start and the world’s cableships have proven once again how vital they are to the subsea cable industries continued forward progress. This year has already brought the decision by Orange Marine to increase their fleet, and just before publication of this Issue of SubTel Forum Magazine, the Ile de Sein and her hardworking crew announced completion of the final splice for the EllaLink cable system. So let’s look at some numbers. Previously Figure 1 focused solely on whether a vessel had reached its intended destination at the time the data was pulled. As more information is collected a third choice became apparent; those of vessels that have not had any movement in the last two months. In January and February 13% of the 46 vessels tracked had no movement. The vessel Pacific Link which was sold to DNEX in 2019 has been out of commission for some time as it received an overhaul of its aging onboard electrical systems which started in 2020. In Figure 2, you can see that the majority of moving vessels would reach their next destination within the first week in March. The remaining 14% of active vessels were en route to new destinations that would be reach by the end of March and currently there are no vessels with long lead estimations. The AIS tracking system used, records the locations provided several times a day by each vessel; usually 3-5 reports
a day per vessel. Figure 3 breaks down the regions of activity by averaging how many vessels reported their location in each region in the last two months. The most active oceanic area was West Africa which had 7 different vessels move through it with a total of 939 reports; of which the Ile d’Ouessant spent the most time reporting 199 times in the region. The Pierre de
Figure 1: Arrived at Destination
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
Figure 2: Weeks Left Estimated in Transit