Two huge ships are floating off the coast of Sydney. This is what they’re doing

Two massive ships floating off the coast of Sydney have sparked curiosity from locals and, while the ships won’t remain for long, they will be leaving something behind that could play a vital role in Australia’s future.

The ships became visible off Maroubra on the weekend, but have both been on a long journey, leaving a trail of fibre optic cables buried in the seabed behind them.

Undersea cables, the submerged spine of the internet’s global connectivity, are not just critical for connectivity, but also as a tool of diplomacy.

The cables are similar to projects being funded through the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific, which received a $550 million boost on Tuesday as the federal government attempts to strengthen ties with Pacific leaders.

The 139-metre SubCom Responder is anchored off Maroubra, where it is laying cable for Google’s Tabua connection between Australia and the US via Fiji.

Melanie Silva, Google Australia managing director, called the arrival of the cables a “big milestone” in the project, saying they would improve connectivity across the nation.

The 147-metre Alcatel Submarine Networks’ vessel Ile d’Yeu was seen on Wednesday, also near Maroubra.

The Ile d’Yeu will probably have moved on within 24 hours, Subco founder Bevan Slattery told the Herald.

The ship has been laying Subco’s SMAP cable, connecting Sydney to Perth via Melbourne (at Torquay) and Adelaide.

The Perth to Melbourne portion of the SMAP cable has been completed and will become operational in March, with the Sydney connection to be spliced in and ready for service in May, Slattery said.

Previous connections have mostly been overland.

“One [aim] is to improve resilience and connectivity across Australian capitals, but secondly, [to] interconnect the Indian and Pacific Ocean,” Slattery said.

“There’s only a couple of routes that it typically follows to do that, which is usually rail and beside road.

“This is diverse from that, and also subsea systems in deep water … [have] a higher reliability factor.

“Threat diversity as well … bushfires or landslides or flooding or whatever doesn’t affect the subsea system.”

For the average internet user, it might mean more reliable connections, but there are also potential international diplomacy benefits.

“It’s about positioning Australia as the new hub for the Indo-Pacific region,” Slattery said.

“A new resiliency for the entire internet to avoid these kinds of areas that are geopolitically unstable, or just high rates of incidents or faults.”

Online vessel tracking platforms list the Ile d’Yeu as departing from Melbourne on January 7, after setting off from Perth in July.

It was recently converted to lay undersea cables in partnership with Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, which claimed the vessel has the world’s biggest cable loading capacity. It can load more than 8500 tonnes of cable, enough to lay 15,000 kilometres, on a single voyage.

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