Never thought I would hear about that again especially not on The Register...

I was part of the FLAG (Fibre Link Around the Globe) project in 1994 and was actually one of the dynamic positioning officers that piloted the Cable Layer through the Suez canal and on down the Gulf of Suez and Red Sea.

I remember these cables being very heavily armoured due to the amount of shipping / fishing and anchoring that goes on in that area - they must have done a proper job to totally break them.

Oh and see-me-wee is another acronym but can't remember what that stands for.

On sharks, they do actually like biting telephone cables there is even a bite resistant cable that suposedly doesn't feel nice when they bite it...

Those were the days... 13 weeks away with 6 weeks off, 12 hour shifts and a nice big bank balance at the end - why did I ever switch to IT!!!