INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A year ago, Vero Beach marine biologist Chuck Sultzman dove deep trying to prove a theory that underwater telecommunication cables laid across the ocean floor damage coral reefs.
The ravaged reefs he saw made him advocate for stricter regulations on telecommunication companies draping coral reefs with cables carrying high-speed voice and data transmission across the world.
“If you lifted the cable up, you were able to see that everything was dead underneath,” said Sultzman.
Proposed policies restricting the laying of new underwater telecommunication cables may be approved by Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet officers Tuesday, but Sultzman and other environmental advocates say the rules don’t go far enough to protect Florida’s coral.
Last summer, with funding from an environmental advocacy group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Sultzman became the research leader for a PEER crew that explored the waters three quarters of a mile off of Hollywood’s shore where underwater cables cross some of Florida’s most extensive shallow reef systems.
The crew found evidence of damage from when the cables were first placed by AT&T five years before.
They also found evidence of more recent marring from cables moving with undersea currents.
They took photos of flattened sea fans, sponges with gouges, scarred soft coral and sections of slow-growing hard coral scrapped clean away.
“Coral grows at a rate of a half centimeter a year. This is irreplaceable in our lifetime. We saw no signs of recovery,” Sultzman said.
Proposed restrictions
Bush has not given any indication on whether he favors the Department of Environmental Protection’s recommendations. But if passed Tuesday, the new rules would halt telecommunication companies from landing new cables on the Atlantic shores of Miami-Dade and Monroe counties where reefs are too thick to be avoided.
Fees for using state-owned submerged property would also be cut as an incentive for companies to lay future cables in certain reef gaps in Palm Beach and Broward counties instead of routing cables on top of reefs off of Florida’s coasts.
“If done properly, the impacts to resources can be significantly reduced by routing them through the gaps or directionally drilling (cables beneath the ocean floor),” said Mike Sole, bureau chief of the state Division of Beaches and Wetland Resources. Companies don’t have to use the designated gaps and those specific paths aren’t the only natural openings in Florida’s reefs, he said.
Representing PEER, Sultzman attended a DEP public hearing in February to request that cables be banned farther north along the east coast to Cape Canaveral, which is the northernmost point of the state’s Oculina reefs. DEP officials rejected the request, saying that these reefs are 200 to 300 feet offshore, beyond the reach of the state’s jurisdiction.
Since Sultzman couldn’t talk the DEP into banning cables from all southeast Florida shores, he suggested companies be required to drill cables beneath the surface within the reef gaps or use anchors to prevent undersea currents from moving the cables, ramming them into nearby reefs.
Although burying cables is only required near shorelines and anchoring isn’t specifically mentioned in the proposed statewide rule, Sole said that anchoring could be requested in the permitting process.
While some criticize the DEP for not proposing stricter policies, others say the recommended policies are overkill.
“The rule is unnecessary. The existing system works well to protect Florida’s coastal reefs,” said Jerry Tourgee of the North American Submarine Cable Association.
While Sultzman found that cables damaged reefs, the submarine cable association posted reports with evidence of peaceful cohabitation among cables and coral. Coral can grow around the cables and sponges will even attach themselves to cables, according to reports posted by the cable association.
“The allegations made by some environmentalists about adverse impacts of submarine cables are simply not true,” Tourgee said. Although the cable association contends that the rule is unnecessary, Tourgee said its members believe they can live with the proposed rule.
Past precedents
About 10 large-scale, international telecommunication underwater cables have come ashore to connect to electrical stations in Vero Beach, Hollywood, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach from Europe, the Bahamas and Latin America.
With the 1990s Internet boom, submarine cable companies added international lines to accommodate the increased data transmissions, said Richard Mack of KMI Research, a fiberoptics market research company in Rhode Island.
The last set of international cables built from Vero Beach’s shores went to the Bahamas in the late 1990s, Vero Beach City Manager Rex Taylor said.
“They come ashore and tie into existing facilities. It’s all underground. Most people don’t even know the cables are there,” Taylor said.
The cables are buried in sand at the shore, but they aren’t buried all the way to the Bahamas. Another Vero Beach scuba diver Mike Blatus has seen where the line to the Bahamas comes out from the sand and lies on top of the reefs near South Beach.
“I’ve dove over the cables a few times. I don’t think they’ve had an effect on the reefs,” Blatus said.
Looking at whether the cables off Vero Beach’s shores affect reefs wasn’t part of the project approval process, Taylor said.
“The only thing we look at is how it affects our facilities and properties,” Taylor said. “We assume that the state or whoever has jurisdiction out there takes care of (protecting coral reefs).”
In the waters off Florida’s coast, it becomes murky as to which governmental agency is responsible for protecting the ocean’s natural resources.
“These reefs are very fragile and extensive. A certain collection of organisms will live there that don’t live in other parts of Florida and care should be taken not to destroy that. It’s up to the state to regulate this activity,” Sultzman said.
By Katie Campbell, Press Journal staff writer.
CABLE FACTS
ﾕ Transatlantic cables cost about $1 billion and a single cable from Florida to the Bahamas could cost under $5 million to install.
Source: North American Submarine Cable Association
ﾕ By 2002, about 740 fiberoptic undersea systems had been installed worldwide, making a spider web of 810,000 kilometers of cable connecting the continents of the world. About 335,000 more kilometers of cable are expected to be installed by 2006.
Source: KMI Research
