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The Conversation
The Conversation
Christopher Stevenson, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Sedimentology, University of Liverpool

Avalanches can grow 100 times larger under the sea than on land – here’s why they’re a risk to the internet

ZHMURCHAK/Shutterstock

Underwater avalanches are powerful natural events that happen all the time under the surface of the ocean. They are impossible to see and extremely difficult to measure, which means we know little about how they work.

Yet these phenomena pose a hazard to our global communication networks. The proliferation of the internet has required an ever-expanding network of fibre-optic seabed cables, which carry practically all global internet traffic.

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