Relationship between the Arctic environment and telecommunication infrastructure

Although the telegraph wire that connected Alaska with the rest of the US in 1903 was celebrated with the message “Alaska is now open to civilization” (Hansen, Reference Hansen and Nuttall2005, p. 2014) and although infrastructure has been described as an integral part of the architecture of modernity and nation-state formation (Niewöhner, Reference Niewöhner and Wright2015), the construction of telecommunication infrastructure should not be considered merely a human-centered story about modernization. Nor should it be seen only as a relatively simple policy-based process which improves the quality of life of and brings greater business opportunities for the populations of areas hosting or located at the end-points of this new infrastructure (Salminen & Hossain, Reference Salminen and Hossain2018). The environment shapes society, culture and economy – and the various material manifestations thereof. This mutual constitution of society, its technology and infrastructure, and the environment in the Arctic deserves closer scrutiny.

Connectivity becomes easily abstracted as an end or a development taking place in a technological vacuum with little reference to the local time, space and physical infrastructure. We argue that connectivity is nether ahistorical nor unattached from environmental questions. Literature discussing infrastructure – especially its modes and effects – offers a fruitful starting point for the analysis of the interplay between telecommunication lines and the environment. In this study, infrastructure is conceptualized as a matter which enables the movement of other matters. In practice, these spaces of flow are built networks which facilitate the flow of goods, people or ideas and allow for their exchange (Castells, Reference Castells2010; Larkin, Reference Larkin2013). Even if infrastructure supports particular forms of work and social life and shapes social practices, it may escape the public awareness due to its invisibility. Reliability is another typical and expected feature for infrastructure. Therefore, infrastructure often draws attention and is experienced only when it fails and is unable to deliver what is usually taken for granted. (e.g. Airaksinen, Reference Airaksinen2003.) Furthermore, the disappearance of infrastructure itself also means that the technical, social, political and ethical choices made during the planning, construction and maintenance phases become easily forgotten (Niewöhner, Reference Niewöhner and Wright2015).

People have augmented their natural surroundings with infrastructure such as roads, water supplies, power grids, telephones and buildings to the extent that they have become the “naturalized background of modernity” (Blok et al., Reference Blok, Nakazora and Winthereik2016). Yet, it is not necessarily the infrastructure itself but the practices, materials and settings of infrastructuring that ought to be focused on. Besides emphasizing the need to unfold the choices made by different actors throughout the development of infrastructure, the shift from infrastructure to infrastructuring guides one to consider the relations between centers and peripheries. “Center” and “periphery” are not unambiguous concepts without internal frictions. The attitudes, exchanges, collisions and dependencies between them can be analyzed to understand the process through which infrastructure comes into being (Niewöhner, Reference Niewöhner and Wright2015). In analysing the infrastructuring of the environment, attention must be paid to the practices used to manage this environment. At the same time, as Blok et al. (Reference Blok, Nakazora and Winthereik2016) pointed out, the environment should not be seen as a passive “receiver” of infrastructuring attempts. Simultanously, infrastructure should not be conceived merely as a tool of human intentionality. Although infrastructuring may appear as an attempt to exercise control over the environment, natural conditions can prevent, postpone or force unforeseen modifications of the original construction and maintenance plans. Furthermore, infrastructuring can turn societies more vulnerable to phenomena taking place in the often-uncontrollable environment.

Of the many attempts to bring the histories of technology and the environment together, we found Agar’s (Reference Agar, Agar and Ward2018, see also Ward, Reference Ward, Agar and Ward2018) eightfold categorization clarifying. He provides the following conceptualizations to the environment and to the relationship between the environment and infrastructure: 1) environment as input into a technological system; 2) environment as something naturally made into or a component of a technological system; 3) environment as something changed (usually damaged) by technological processes; 4) environment as something which exists alongside an artificial world; 5) environment as something untouched by artifice; 6) environment as something represented through technology; 7) environmental knowledge as something organized by being registered with technology and 8) environment and technology as interconnected cultural imaginaries. These eight categories remind us that the materials used in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure are parts of at least two environments: the environment they are extracted from (often outside the Arctic) and the environment they are added to. Technology, again, consists of both physical and informational components. The concept relates not only to the products embodying it but also to the information and knowledge concerning its use and to the process through which it comes into being (Wahab et al., Reference Wahab, Rose and Osman2012). While Agar’s (Reference Agar, Agar and Ward2018) categorization helped us in formulating the research questions, the discussion on “pipeline ecologies”, where pipelines are understood as a form of distribution connecting individual nodes via linear routes insulated from the environment (Starosielski, Reference Starosielski, Starosielski and Walker2016), affected the basic premises of our project.

In this study, we abstain from taking a stance on the question of whether the concept of pipelines could or should be broadened beyond the narrow metal conduits used to transport, for example, gas and oil. However, Starosielski’s (Reference Starosielski, Starosielski and Walker2016) argument that (pipe)lines – that attempt to disentangle whatever they are carrying from the environment they move through – do not develop in isolation, but are connected to the surrounding elements, including the growth of trees, wind and heavy winter snow, as well as to the local and regional entanglements of distribution, is found highly relevant. Based on her studies of rural New York State, Starosielski paid attention to the temporal dimension of infrastructure and argued that the expansion of fiber-optic cables is not a process through which a new technology is introduced. Rather it is a renewal of spatial organization and a set of ecological practices established over the preceding decades. A new network is thus not simply an overlay onto existing infrastructure but an entangled part of the same spatial and ecological organization of the land (and the sea). While Starosielski analyzed how fiber-optic networks are enmeshed with electrical grids and take on their ecological underpinnings because of the similarities in their forms of distribution, our research focuses on the different types of telecommunication infrastructure – telegraph wires, phone lines and coaxial and fiber-optic cables – and the ways in which the development of newer telecommunication lines has connected with their predecessors and the ecological forces they all have confronted at different times.

Telecommunication lines as adjusted additions to the Arctic environment

The direct environmental impacts of telecommunication lines

Although the construction period of telecommunication lines that causes the most significant changes in the environment is relatively short, the lines’ direct environmental impact is long-lasting. Even telecommunication lines that are never completed or no longer used for their original purpose leave traceable signs and affect the surroundings they are attached to. For example, Walter R. Hamilton (1872–1964), who participated in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, found old green glass insulators and galvanized wires, which had been used by the constructors of the planned route from North America to Europe in the 1860s (Hamilton, Reference Hamilton1964). Many of the impacts caused by the telecommunication lines in the Arctic seem to be global. Trees have been cut down in order to prepare a passage for telegraph and telephone lines, the surface of the ground or seafloor has been broken in order to bury cables, and local flora and fauna have had to adapt to the appearance, continuous presence, and repairs of the man-made infrastructure.

In different parts of the world, telecommunication lines have been built alongside transport corridors, including roads and railways. Although these decisions have been based on economic and functional rationales, the concentration of infrastructure has helped to limit the area of natural environment directly affected. Even if time has passed and technologies have evolved, the old spatial organizations have remained. Thus, for anyone who knows how the fiber-optic cable routes followed the routes of the telegraphic wires which followed the railway routes, it is easier to understand why Council Bluffs, the mid-sized town in Iowa where the first transcontinental railway began, is today the location of many large-scale data centers in need of good connectivity (Burrington, Reference Burrington2015). This kind of transport corridor, where humans, cargo and information travel side by side, is also present in the Arctic. The corridor idea has been mentioned, for example, when the projects envisioning both fiber-optic cable and train connections between Kirkenes in Norway and northern Finland have been bundled together (Saunavaara Reference Saunavaara2018; Turpeinen, Reference Turpeinen1996a). If the lack of roads and railways, a typical situation for many parts of the Arctic, has prevented the formation of such a corridor, the telecommunication lines may have been paired, for example, with power lines (Dall, Reference Dall1870; Troianovski Reference Troianovski2019).

The erection of telecommunication infrastructure has historically been part of the expansion of the non-indigenous lifestyle to the Arctic. The arrival of newcomers from the South has been a feature typical of the construction, maintenance and operation of infrastructure. Although the locals, many of whom were indigenous, cooperated and worked for the telegraph companies, they sometimes lacked the necessary skills or interest to join these projects. (Dall, Reference Dall1870; The Lewinston Daily Sun, 1900; Huurdeman, Reference Huurdeman2003; Kennan, Reference Kennan1873; The Times (Richmond, Va.), 1898; Watson, Reference Watson and Nuttall2005). The men from the South needed local natural resources to survive and bought those from the locals. The first “civilized men” – to borrow George Kennan’s (an employee of the Russo-American Telegraph Company) expression from 1873 – who visited desolate territories in Canada, Alaska and Russia left behind plenty of new types of garbage (Bush, Reference Bush1871; Hamilton, Reference Hamilton1964; Kennan, Reference Kennan1873). The prepared poles were abandoned when the work was suddenly interrupted in 1867, but the locals used them as firewood (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1897).

Animals have both helped to construct the telecommunication lines and been forced to adapt to their presence. Descriptions of horses, reindeer and dogs used to transport supplies to the telegraph and telephone line sites in different parts of the Arctic exist, but the reactions of wild animals to the new features of the environment have also been recorded (Bush, Reference Bush1871; Dall, Reference Dall1870). According to an article published in a Finnish magazine in 1912, animals severely damaged the telegraph lines before they got used to them. Telegraph lines had a buzzing sound and, according to the article, bears in Norway thought there were bee nests on the poles. The utility poles were also damaged by woodpeckers and small birds built nests in them (Helsingin kaiun kuukauskuvalehti, 1912; -hm 1873). Encounters with human-made infrastructure have also damaged animals. Human presence and the material signs of it have disturbed the wildlife by causing physiological stress and behavioral changes (such as avoiding certain areas). (e.g. Coppes et al., Reference Coppes, Burghardt, Hagen, Suchant and Braunisch2017).

The Arctic environment has influenced the livelihoods which have been similar (hunting, fishing, reindeer husbandry) in different parts of the Arctic. Historically, the survival of the indigenous peoples has depended on animals they have lived in close connection with (Kylli & Enbuske, in press). The local people who had never seen telegraph lines had many kinds of fears when facing the line constructors. According to Richard J. Bush’s reminiscences from the early 1870s, indigenous people in Siberia worried whether there would still be enough room for them and the deer once the line was completed, and wanted to know how apart the poles would be from each other and whether the line would frighten wild deer and prevent their migration (Bush, Reference Bush1871). Besides illuminating the differences in the needs and desires between the local people and the infrastructure developers, this example testifies that the people living in the areas through which telecommunication lines were built have always seen the connection between the new infrastructure and the natural elements they were familiar with.

Although the direct environmental impact of the fiber-optic cables is relatively small and the installation process should not cause a major strain to the environment, the circumstances in the Arctic have recently challenged these assumptions in Alaska. Two companies dug trenches for their fiber-optic cables alongside the Dalton Highway, which is the only haul road to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. The road sits atop permafrost and its foundations remain stable as long as permafrost stays frozen. However, the removal of the insulating topsoil and vegetation as a part of the trench digging process accelerated the melting of permafrost which now threatens the foundations of the road. While there are examples of the thawing permafrost causing problems with roads even when fiber-optic projects are not involved, this particular cable installation is recognized as a threat to local streams and creeks, which could be polluted with the runoff of water and dirt from the trenches (Bernton, Reference Bernton2019; Grove, Reference Grove2018; Herz, Reference Herz2018; Quinn, Reference Quinn2016).

The interest in extending submarine fiber-optic cables in the Arctic Ocean also prompts questions regarding this infrastructure’s environmental impact. Even if cables and cable operations are said to have a minor negative impact on the marine environment (Davenport, Reference Davenport2018), interactions between the environment and submarine cables are inevitable. In depths deeper than 2 000 m, that is, in areas where bottom trawl fishing does not take place, the physical footprint is the smallest because the fiber-optic cables are laid directly on the seabed and their diameter is only around 20 mm. Cables in shallower waters can be up to 50 mm in diameter, and although they can be surface-laid in areas with high ecological sensitivity, they are often buried below the seabed in order to protect them against shipping and fishing activities. The cable burial involving mechanical ploughing and high-pressure water injection disturbs the benthic environment, but it differs, for example, from bottom trawling in a few important points. While fishing activities are repetitive and affect wide areas, cable burial (assuming the normal situation where no maintenance is needed during the average operation time of 25 years) is a one-off operation which affects only the designated cable route (Carter et al., Reference Carter, Burnett, Davenport, Burnett, Beckman and Davenport2014; Davenport, Reference Davenport2018).

The tightening of regulations related to the environment, coordinated by the International Seabed Authority, is reportedly making the route planning for new submarine cables more difficult (Stafford, Reference Stafford2019). However, the issues related to cable landings are the most common reasons for conflicts between telecommunication companies and environmentalists, who usually worry about the flora, fauna and landscapes in sensitive coastal areas. Although the Arctic hosts only a handful of cable landing stations and Quintillion has managed to land in six new locations in Alaska – the cable comes ashore inside a steel conduit installed 60–80 ft deep and stretching up to a mile offshore (Quintillion, 2020a) – and there are no reports of major local opposition, some historical cases demonstrate conflicts in the North. For example, a dispute between the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation and environmentalists took place in 1963 when the company cleared forest for cables connecting to another cable system (Starosielski, Reference Starosielski2015).

The relationship between submarine coaxial and fiber-optic cables and marine animals has received much attention. For example, the claim that sharks are a threat to submarine cables has been described as the biggest myth cited in the press. It is true that surface-laid cables are exposed to fish and marine mammals and that 16 cable faults recorded between 1877 and 1955 were attributed to whale entanglements, but when the submarine telegraph cables were replaced by the coaxial cables in the 1950s these problems ceased. However, a study conducted in the 1950s concerning whale entanglements in cables, which was based on telegraphic era findings, has been used to inform decisions about coaxial and fiber-optic cable development. The best-known case of conflicts between marine animals and fiber-optic cables dates back to the mid-1980s, when a deep-dwelling crocodile shark attacked one of the earliest deep-ocean submarine cables. It was speculated that sharks were attracted by electromagnetic fields or cable vibrations, which they confused for prey. While attempts to confirm this assumption were inconclusive, the cable industry reacted to the problem by adding insulating layers. No animal-related cable faults have been reported in recent years, but attention has been paid to the acoustic instruments used during cable route surveys. (Carter et al., Reference Carter, Burnett, Davenport, Burnett, Beckman and Davenport2014; Starosielski, Reference Starosielski2015; TeleGeography, n.d.). This overall situation, coupled with the small number of submarine cables in the Arctic waters, explains why no marine-animal-related problems have been reported in the Arctic.

The indirect environmental impacts of telecommunication lines

The construction of telecommunication lines has always been connected with different political, social and economic processes, just like infrastructuring in general. The first telegraph lines built in Alaska connected local military garrisons with their regional headquarters, and the local telegraph network in northern Finland was expanded during World War I when the strategic importance of the area increased. Eventually, the new terrestrial line to Petsamo (Pechenga) and Aleksandrovski was connected to the submarine cable to Peterhead and it hence connected the UK and Russia during the war. The outbreak of World War II initiated the upgrading of communications in Alaska and prompted the decision to build the longest open-wire communication line in the world, stretching from Edmonton, Canada, to Fairbanks, Alaska. The US Army was concerned that the Japanese would be able to intercept communication based on the wireless radio technology. However, the Arctic telecommunication stations and networks that served the military carried also civilian traffic. For example, the rationale behind the so-called White Alice project in Alaska in the mid-1950s was to provide communication facilities needed for the defence against air attack from the North, but it also became the backbone of the state’s civilian communications (Hansen, Reference Hansen and Nuttall2005; Hudson, Reference Hudson2015; Turpeinen, Reference Turpeinen1996a). The recent evolution of Quintillion’s submarine fiber-optic cable project shows that this kind of connection has not disappeared. Even if launched as a commercial project planning connect East Asia and the UK through Alaska and the Northwest Passage, the company has recently hired several former high-ranking military officers and refers openly in its communication to national security needs and the project’s role as a part of the Arctic defence infrastructure (Quintillion, 2020b; Quintillion, 2020c).

When the Norwegian parliament discussed the routes and financing of the country’s first telegraph lines, it paid attention to the connections between the southern cities and to the neighboring countries. The connectivity needs of the most important fishing villages, both in the southern and northern parts of the country, were also prioritised (Tromsøposten, 1896; Aftenbladet, 1863). The early construction of telecommunication lines in northernmost Norway, the Lofoten line built in 1861, was backed by a calculation that the telegraph line would increase the fish catch by 25 per cent. This increase was assumed to result from improved exchange of information between fishermen working west and east of Lofoten (Røde, Reference Røde1996).

In northern Finland, the expansion of telegraph and telephone network was closely related to the development of forest industry. When increased demand made logging activities economically feasible in Finnish Lapland at the end of the nineteenth century, timber companies began to promote the establishment of a telegraph station in Rovaniemi. The businessmen who applied for a permission to build a telephone line from Tornio to Haparanda in 1900 argued that a line crossing the national border was needed because the Swedish companies were interested in buying timber from northern Finland. Norwegian companies were actually already collecting timber from northern Finland in the 1870s, and the need for a telephone line to Sweden became soon obvious. Approximately 30 per cent of the timber used in the Norrbotten sawmills at the beginning of the twentieth century came from Finnish Lapland. However, the first wires north of Rovaniemi were built only after promising mineral deposits were found (Elenius, Tjelmeland, Lähteenmäki, Golubev, Niemi & Salo, Reference Elenius, Tjelmeland, Lähteenmäki, Golubev, Niemi and Salo2015; Turpeinen, Reference Turpeinen1996a).

The significant and long-lasting role of extractive industries in the infrastructuring of the Arctic must be emphasized. The opening or presence of a mine has often been the impetus not only for the development of housing, electric power networks and transport infrastructure (Avango et al., Reference Avango, Kunnas, Petterson, Petterson, Roberts, Solbär, Wråkberg and Keskitalo2019; Kylli & Saunavaara, in press; McCannon, Reference McCannon2012; Warde, Reference Warde and Keskitalo2019), but also for the construction or improvement of telecommunication lines. Just as Norilsk Nickel’s desire to modernise its business practices led to the construction of a 600-mile-long fiber-optic cable connection through the tundra in 2017 (Troianovski, Reference Troianovski2019), the construction of telegraph and telephone lines alongside the so-called Iron Ore Line (malmbanan) between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Atlantic Ocean in northernmost Sweden was connected to the opening of the iron mine in Kiruna more than a century ago (Elenius et al., Reference Elenius, Tjelmeland, Lähteenmäki, Golubev, Niemi and Salo2015; McCannon, Reference McCannon2012). The development of telecommunication infrastructure in Yukon and Alaska was also associated with gold discoveries. The telegraph line to Yukon not only provided a way to communicate but it was also used as a landmark to guide new miners coming from the South through the wilderness (The Lewinston Daily Sun, 1900; Hudson, Reference Hudson2015; Jessup Reference Jessup2007; Uusi Suome, 1889; Satakunnan kansa, 1927).

As the decades have passed, both the telecommunication lines and the businesses depending on them have developed. Telegraph wires have evolved into fiber-optic cables and the industry relying on connectivity has at least partially changed from gold mining into energy-hungry bitcoin mining. Obviously the record-keeping services related to cryptocurrency, which takes place at least in Iceland, northern Norway and Russia (Adalbjornsson, Reference Adalbjornsson2019; Baydakova, Reference Baydakova2020; Fedorinova & Atkinson, Reference Fedorinova and Atkinson2019; Smolaks, Reference Smolaks2018), are not the only digital-age industrial activity in the circumpolar North of which development is interwoven with that of the fiber-optic cable network. The data center industry is recognized as a potential growth industry in regional development strategies in different parts from the Arctic (Saunavaara, Reference Saunavaara2018). As fiber-optic cable connectivity is identified as one of the prerequisites for the expansion of the industry, there are great hopes for Arctic submarine fiber-optic cable projects, for example, in Alaska, northern Finland, and Norway. The Arctic Connect project, aiming for a new submarine fiber-optic cable connection through the Northeast Passage, entails also a plan to create landings in the Russian Arctic in places of significant industrial activity. Therefore, if it materialises, the project could contribute to the future of areas already undergoing great transformations due to large-scale hydrocarbon developments (Saunavaara, Reference Saunavaara2018; Saunavaara & Salminen, in press). In general, the quickly advancing digitalization of societies requires constantly new digital equipment and machines, new technical solutions and applications, new connections, transformed infrastructures and new users, which all increase the demand for electricity. The life cycle of consumer goods has become relatively short, which means that energy is constantly used for replacing outdated equipment with newer versions. While the conventional wisdom remains that digitalization decreases humanity’s environmental footprint, the scale of the ongoing digital transformation is gradually challenging this claim.

Tourism has also been connected with the development of telecommunication lines in the Arctic. While the early Finnish tourists used the first telephone lines as guideposts when visiting the Sámi area of northernmost Finland (Nuori Voima, 1929), the demands of hikers were also taken into consideration when the telephone services in the extremely sparsely populated wilderness areas were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. The great distances and high expenses had postponed these projects in earlier decades. In the early 1980s, it was already clear that the services based on radio-telephones were not profitable. Eventually, the lack of profitability led to the elimination of these services in the 1990s (Turpeinen, Reference Turpeinen1996a, Reference Turpeinen1996b). In the past three decades, internet has become potentially the most important means of communication for tourists and service providers. At the same time, the expectations and demands of tourists and service providers regarding available high-quality internet connections have risen. It is thus unsurprising that improved connectivity is considered a factor supporting the growing tourism industry in the Arctic (Arctic Council Task Force on Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Arctic, 2017; Warf, Reference Warf2011).

However, local networks, which are often planned to fulfil the needs of local populations, may face problems when the demand for bandwidth increases during the tourism season. In some extreme cases, such as the small communities hosting cruise ships (or cruise ships just passing by, see YLE, 2020), the demand for bandwidth may drastically change according to the time of the day. In many places in the North, teleoperators consider network construction unprofitable, so the states must subsidise the infrastructure construction and renewals through different financial schemes. On top of state support, the local residents may have been paying part of the costs of, for example, a village’s fiber-optic network build-up or connecting the last mile. Commercial interest in network construction, however, does exist in regional centers and in the biggest tourism centers, although many rural areas will continue to depend on mobile connections in the future (e.g. Salminen, Reference Salminen, Hossain and Cambou2018)

As these examples show, the development of telecommunication lines has been a factor contributing to who and how many people live or visit in the Arctic and what kind of social and economic practices they initiate and sustain. It can be debated, case-by-case, whether the construction of telecommunication infrastructure actually triggers these changes or whether the construction of a telegraph wire, a telephone line or a fiber-optic cable demonstrates that some kind of change has already taken place. However, it is clear that telecommunication lines have, at least partially, enabled the technical, economic and social processes which have often had much greater impact on the environment than the physical infrastructure itself. The fact that all modern-day business activities need proper connectivity and people around the world rely on web-based services and leisure suggests that the indirect environmental impacts of telecommunication lines will expand.

Utilization of telecommunication lines to observe, record and protect the Arctic environment

The relationship between communication technology, infrastructure and the environment can also be approached from the perspective of the capability to register, record and analyze the environment as well as to disseminate knowledge and information about the environment. Although the telegraph and phone lines and fiber-optic cables differ, for example, from cameras, tape recorders and weather satellites, which are technological devices designed to capture and store information, they can still be analyzed from this perspective as well. This approach, echoing the conception that pipelines are not isolated but connected to the environments they pass through, challenges one to consider whether telecommunication lines have only harmful and destructive impacts on the natural environment they are attached to or whether they can be used to learn about and protect the environment.

Early telegraph line workers, who sometimes had side interests related to the possible exploitation of local natural resources, were also explorers who collected scientific and geographical information about the Arctic and made corrections to the maps then used (Dall, Reference Dall1870). However, it is not only the people constructing and maintaining the infrastructure, but also the infrastructure itself that has had a role to play. Forest fires can have devastating effects on various businesses and communities in the Arctic. Although satellites may be the type of modern-day communication infrastructure that comes to one’s mind when the struggle to prevent forest fires is mentioned (Arctic Wildfires, 2019), forest fire prevention was also one of the arguments used on behalf of the telegraph and phone line development in the 1920s in the northernmost part of Finland. Means of communication were needed to pass on information concerning the occurrence of fires rapidly and to deploy firefighters with minimal delay (Pohjolan Sanomat, 1935; Rovaniemi: Pohjolan ja Lapin ääni, 1929a).

While the telecommunication infrastructure has provided ways to share important information, for example, concerning weather conditions (Hansen, Reference Hansen and Nuttall2005), it has also helped us to understand life at the bottom of the ocean. Historically, organisms encrusted on recovered submarine communication cables have increased our knowledge of the marine biota; especially that of the deep ocean (Carter et al., Reference Carter, Burnett, Davenport, Burnett, Beckman and Davenport2014). While this kind of collection of data has been more or less unplanned and occurred only once, the future may be different if the Sensor Enabled Scientific Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) or dual-purpose cable initiatives are carried out. The basic idea of dual-purpose cables is to integrate different types of environmental sensors, designed to measure temperature, salinity, ocean circulation, sea level rise and so forth, into commercial submarine fiber-optic cables. Such cables could also monitor seismic activity and tsunamis. While repeaters capable of regenerating fiber-optic signals every 50–100 km are often envisioned as the part of the cable system which could host these sensors, recent studies have proposed that the fiber itself could be used as the sensing element to detect earthquakes and other such phenomena (Marra et al., Reference Marra, Clivati, Luckett, Tampellini, Kronjäger, Wright and Calonico2018; Starosielski, Reference Starosielski2015; Webster & Dawe, Reference Webster and Dawe2019).

The basic idea behind dual-purpose submarine cables is not new, but its implementation has turned out to be challenging. However, the suggested industry-academia cooperation enabling the establishment of affordable large-scale research infrastructure (academic institutions would cover part of the total cost of the commercial cable system, but still pay less than the price of a purely academic installation) is particularly appealing in the Arctic. The Arctic Ocean is one of the marine areas we know least about and it is a very challenging environment for the development and maintenance of research infrastructure. (Saunavaara & Salminen, in press).