From the Seafloor to Your Laptop Last Wednesday the massive
cable lay coiled in the ship's cable tanks like thread around a
40-foot (12-meter) wide bobbin—but not for long. It would soon
be threaded off ship and through a 30-ton (27-metric-ton) steel
plough that fed the cable into a waist-deep furrow dug into the
seafloor. The cable will deliver power to the ocean instruments
and transmit their data back to Vancouver Island's Port Alberni
Shore Station, where the two ends of the cable will sit. In
total, more than 200 scientific instruments, along with video
cameras and a remotely operated vehicle will be connected to the
network. The devices will stream data into the Web nonstop for
the next 25 years. "This way anybody from Beijing to Calcutta to
London can go on the Internet and look at the data," said Brian
Bornhold, NEPTUNE Canada's project scientist. (Related:
"Students Log On as Scientists Explore Deep Ocean" [December 6,
2004].) "It provides the impetus to be interdisciplinary and
work with other peopl