Iceberg at Ilulissat

🔴 INSOLITE - #Groenland : Un immense iceberg s’est retourné ce matin au large d’Ilulissat, offrant un spectaculaire phénomène naturel.

👉 Aucun blessé n’a été signalé. Les autorités locales n’ont fait état d’aucun dégât. 🌊🧊 pic.twitter.com/P2rHzfYWmp

— FranceNews24 (@FranceNews24) July 26, 2026

 A massive iceberg was seen turning over off the coast of Greenland, near Ilulissat. (July 26, 2026)

 Video captured by an eyewitness showed the moment the iceberg turned over, creating waves close to the coastal city.

 

Ilulissat is home to the Unesco listed Ilulissat Icefjord and is located on the west coast of the island.

“Large icebergs can remain grounded or trapped near the mouth of the icefjord while they melt, fracture and become small enough to move into Disko Bay,”

Visualization with the GeoGarage platform (DGA Denmark nautical raster chart) 

 

Watch the complete collapse and rollover of a massive iceberg near Ilulissat, Greenland, on July 25, 2026. (video full 55 mn in real time)

What happens to maritime visibility during a security crisis?

 Maritime activity does not disappear when AIS does : RF data reveals it

 

From LinkedIn UnseenLabs

In complex geopolitical environments, maritime awareness cannot rely on cooperative tracking systems alone.
As tensions escalated recently in the southern Red Sea, Unseenlabs analyzed space-based RF data collected around Bab el-Mandeb to understand how maritime activity evolved during the crisis.

Following the attack on the Encelia, the maritime picture changed rapidly.

 

 

Some vessels may have switched off AIS to reduce their exposure in a high-risk area, while others may have sought to conceal suspicious activity.

 Bringing clarity when the maritime picture becomes uncertain

 

In both cases, AIS silence creates uncertainty.

It does not mean that maritime activity has disappeared.
Because RF data is collected independently of AIS and other cooperative systems, it can reveal active emitters that conventional maritime tracking does not show.

What conventional maritime tracking did not show.

RF data reveals activity not declared through AIS

Because AIS positions can be publicly accessible, vessels may switch off AIS to reduc exposure in high-risks areas.

AIS silence can signal protection or concealment. 

RF insights remain fully independent of AIS and other cooperative tracking systems 

 

This provides an additional layer of visibility when the operational picture becomes incomplete or difficult to interpret.

Links :

• BBC : Yemen's Houthis attack Saudi tanker as US launches more Iran strikes

Ends with a bang: Why lightning stopped stalking the Strait of Malacca

Lightning strikes love shipping lanes because – as we’ve only recently learned – those ships create the dirty skies that facilitate the formation of storm clouds. (Credit: Elke Scholiers/Getty Images)

From BigThing by Franck Jacobs

On a world map of lightning strikes, the world’s busiest sea routes glowed bright — until ships cleaned up their act.

• Lightning is proverbially unpredictable. So why does it seek out shipping lanes?
• This map shows an uncanny concentration of strikes over the Strait of Malacca.
• The culprit is pollution, and cleaner maritime fuel has reduced lightning.

A BOLT FROM THE blue that never strikes the same place twice: Lightning is the proverbial placeholder for the unpredictable.

Nature’s light show erupts whenever and wherever positive and negative charges within a storm cloud collide with sufficient force.

But if lightning is truly place-agnostic, why does it have a thing for cargo ships?
 

Something odd in the skies above the strait

Look at these paired maps of where the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea rub shoulders.

The lower one shows a bright orange trail of particulate matter that perfectly tracks with one of the world’s busiest sea routes.

It skirts Sri Lanka, hugs Sumatra, squeezes through the Strait of Malacca, then heads north past Vietnam toward China.

 

Lightning is not only unevenly distributed, on the top map you can trace the busy sea lane from the bottom map, revealed by the high concentrations of particulate matter emitted by ships’ engines. (Credit: Joel A. Thornton e.a.: “Lightning enhancement over major oceanic shipping lanes”, in Geophysical Research Letter – CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The top map shows annual lightning strikes and immediately contradicts the assumption that these strikes are randomly distributed.

The redder shades blanket land masses, confirming that lightning overwhelmingly prefers terra firma. Land heats up much faster than seas and oceans, generating the strong upward currents that fuel thunderstorms.

In fact, researchers have found that 90% of all lightning occurs over land, which covers just 30% of the planet’s surface.

Yet, something odd happens in the skies above the Strait of Malacca.

It’s a genuine lightning magnet.

So are the waters that fan out in straight red lines to the west and northeast.

Taken together, they form a near-perfect doppelgänger for the shipping lane traced on the lower map.

Lightning, it would seem, enjoys the company of large, ocean-going vessels stuffed with commodities, consumables, and consumer goods.

And the missing link between shipping and lightning is the particulate matter on the lower map.

Clouds are needy creatures

Clouds aren’t just decorative puffs of vapor looking for a place to rain on.

They’re needy creatures.

That vapor requires microscopic specks of something to condense into tiny airborne droplets that can eventually become rain.

Over the open ocean, the air is comparatively clean.

But then come those cargo ships, burning bunker fuel that contains 3.5% sulfur.

Their smokestacks vent an invisible confetti of sulfate particles into the air above that give the moisture exactly what it needs to go from a wispy coastal haze to a churning stack of convective cloud: structure.

The trillions of tiny droplets formed by the pairing of particles and moisture fatten the clouds, which climb higher, past the altitude where temperatures drop below freezing.

Those droplets then turn into ice crystals.

Pretty soon, the turbulence in those clouds sorts itself out into positive charges in the frozen upstairs and negative ones in the merely chilly downstairs.

When that tension becomes intolerable, it is evened out by the discharge of hundreds of millions of volts.

Kapow!

Once you know the connection, it all seems obvious.

But scientists didn’t recognize just how neatly lightning follows global shipping lanes — as if someone had taken a marker pen to a nautical chart — until a 2017 paper published in Geophysical Research Letters pointed it out.

Unintended effect of a cap on sulfur

Did we say follows? We meant followed.

In 2020, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) capped sulfur content in marine fuel at 0.5%, down from 3.5%.

The measure was aimed at reducing respiratory disease and acid rain in port cities. Any effect on lightning was entirely unintended, but dramatic and immediate nonetheless.

A study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in 2025 found that lightning over shipping lanes has dropped by more than 40%.

Even more dramatically, anomalous lightning — the surplus that scientists couldn’t explain by normal weather phenomena — fell by 67%, from an average of 3.9 strikes per square kilometer per year to just 1.25.

 

Lightning flashes as the USS Abraham Lincoln transits the Strait of Malacca back in 2010. These days, lightning storms in the narrow waterway between Sumatra (Indonesia) and the Malay Peninsula (Malaysia) are a lot less common, thanks to cleaner maritime fuels. (Credit: Colby K. Neal/U.S. Navy)

Fewer polluting particles means fewer (but larger) droplets.

More of those clouds rain themselves out before they go electric.

In short: less sulfur, less lightning.

Nature’s way of saying “Thank you”

There is something satisfying about that chain of evidence.

Not because there are now fewer fireworks over the Strait of Malacca; who doesn’t like a good light show?

But because it confirms that reducing one particular source of pollution can have a measurable, real-world effect.

Even if by accident.

With shipping lanes serving as nature’s Leyden jar, the IMO’s inadvertent science experiment proves that dirty skies are electrically more productive, and vice versa.

Those large, ocean-going vessels are still out there, churning along under considerably cleaner skies.

As a result, they’re a lot less likely to be hit by Thor’s hammer.

That may be the atmosphere’s way of saying: Thank you for not making a mess.

Meet Aldi Novel Adilang, the teen who got lost at sea three different times

Mr Adilang was on a rompong, a floating fishing trap that is shaped like a hut

 

From Grunge by Kat Olvera

As much as it's depicted in movies and storybooks, very few people can say they've been lost at sea — or at least, very few people can say they've been found at sea.

The very idea of being stranded in the middle of a vast ocean with no sense of direction or idea where the next meal or even drink of water will come from is enough to make one's stomach churn.

If imagining being swept out to sea once is difficult, try picturing it happening not just once but three times.

That's what happened to Aldi Novel Adilang, who was trapped adrift on the ocean all alone three separate times, all while still in his teenage years.

The scenarios were all unique in their own ways, but they each started out in a similar fashion.

Adilang's job working on a rompong required him to be up to 75 miles from the Indonesian shore, according to The Guardian.

A romping resembles a floating hut and is tethered to the ocean floor.

At night, those working on the rompongs — each occupied by one person — light up a string of lights connecting the floating huts.

These lights act as a lure, bringing in fish to be trapped.

Spending a few months on a rompong might not seem too bad, but what happens when the tether holding your hut securely to the ocean floor snaps?

Adilang knows all too well.

He took a job on the ocean before he could even swim

At 16 years old, Aldi Novel Adilang took a job on a rompong before he even knew how to swim.

He and his friends would spend months out at sea in their huts before returning to shore.

According to the BBC, the company he worked for would bring supplies of food, water, and fuel every week while also coming to collect whatever fish Adilang had trapped.

Not long after starting, Adilang had his first bout of drifting out to sea. In the first incident, he spent a week drifting in the water before the owner of his floating hut rescued him.

The second occurrence was much shorter, and Adilang was only adrift for two days before the owner saved him once more (per BBC).

For most, the first occurrence of floating out to sea would be enough to keep them away from the water for a little bit, but for Adilang, even two mishaps didn't sway his extreme work ethic.

So, after his two adventures, he headed back to the rompong.

The panic of being lost at sea was slow to set in

July 14, 2018, Aldi Novel Adilang felt something while on his rompong — it was the rope anchoring his hut to the ocean floor breaking.

Adilang was 18 years old but didn't panic when he realized he was floating out to sea. Instead, he tried to radio his friends on the other rafts to tell their boss and send help. However, help didn't come for 49 days.

Adilang told The Guardian after his time at sea, "On the first day, I was okay. I wasn't stressed or panicking. I knew they would send a boat, but I was worried it would have to turn back because the winds and the waves were strong. It was after more than a week that I started to get very scared."

His supplies on his rompong got Adilang through the first weeks of being stuck at sea.

At first, he would catch what fish he could and grill them before eating them, but eventually, when his fuel ran out, he had no choice but to eat the fish raw.

Even more distressing was that he ran out of water and was forced to drink ocean water just to stay even slightly hydrated.

According to The Guardian, Adilang used his clothing as a makeshift filter, hoping it would keep him from consuming too much of the salt the ocean water holds.

After three times lost at sea, land is a beloved friend

Adrift in the vast ocean with no supplies or navigation, Aldi Novel Adilang didn't receive his first hope of rescue until a few weeks had passed.

When an Indonesian ship was passing, Adilang communicated with the captain through his radio.

The captain said he would return for Adilang but never did (via The Guardian).

Adilang's mental health began to decline, and he got through the days by reading the Bible (per the BBC).

It wasn't until August 31, when a passing ship carrying coal heard his calls for help over the radio, that Adilang was rescued.

In a YouTube video published by The Guardian, the ship's crew can be seen rescuing Adilang and giving him water and blankets, but after so many days of exposure to the elements, Adilang wasn't in good health.

According to the BBC, his journey took him from Indonesia all the way to the waters of Guam.

After a week aboard the coal ship, Adilang was brought to Japan and flown back to Indonesia just a few days later.

For Adilang, when it comes to being lost at sea, the third time's a charm, and his sailing days are a thing of the past.

After almost two months of fighting to survive while coming face to face with uncertainty and being circled by sharks and other sea life, staying on land would seem pretty wonderful.

The subsea paradox: gray-zone threats, the "Subway Map" illusion, and the case for open subsea

 

From SubmarineNetworks by Winston Qiu

Cartography True digital openness requires physical visibility: Open Cables must no longer remain hidden beneath the waves

Submarine fiber-optic cables carry over 99% of intercontinental digital traffic, serving as the physical circulatory system of the global economy.
Yet, a fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of modern telecommunications: while the industry champions "Open Cable" architectures—characterized by open optical spectrum, disaggregated hardware, and carrier-neutral access—the physical geographic routes of these multi-billion-dollar assets remain veiled in obscurity, proprietary silos, or abstract cartography.

This transparency deficit creates a dangerous asymmetry.
Hostile state actors leveraging dual-use maritime survey vessels are actively conducting underwater reconnaissance on critical corridors like the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN).
Meanwhile, commercial ships, coastal states, and maritime security forces lack a single, standardized, open-access spatial map showing where these cables lie on the seabed.

To defend the world's digital backbone, the global community must align physical infrastructure policy with digital open-access principles: if a cable is open at the fiber level, its non-confidential physical route must be open on the global map.

An OPEN CABLE should never be a Hidden secret beneath the sea.

 

I. Tactical Flashpoint: Gray-Zone Reconnaissance over the PLCN

According to Maritime AI company Windward, a recent encounter in which a Chinese-flagged research vessel was filmed loitering directly over the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN)in the Philippine Sea illustrates the evolving "gray-zone" threat to seabed infrastructure.
Windward said the same ship had "operated repeatedly" in the Paracel Islands (西沙群岛), the Spratly Islands (南沙群岛), the Bay of Bengal and waters off Sri Lanka.
A subsequent report by the American magazine Newsweek brought widespread public attention to the incident, triggering follow-up coverage across major media outlets

Strategic Context of the PLCN

• High-Value Target: PLCN is an ~8,000-mile trans-Pacific fiber system linking Taiwan, the Philippines, and the United States, carrying vital financial, semiconductor supply chain, and government data.
• Geopolitical Backstory: Originally planned with a landing spur in Hong Kong, U.S. national security regulators blocked the Hong Kong segment in 2020 over data interception concerns.
• Operational since 2022 by removing the Hong Kong landing and fiber connection and routing directly into Taiwan and the Philippines, PLCN stands as a symbol of the Pacific digital geopolitical divide.

Operational Mechanics of the Encounter

• Dual-Use Hydrographic Reconnaissance: Nominally civilian research vessels equipped with multi-beam echo sounders, side-scan sonars, and sub-bottom profilers can map seabed contours, cable burial depths, and local bathymetry with high precision.
• Seabed Battlespace Preparation: Loitering at slow speeds over known cable paths allows operators to log precise coordinates for future cable-tapping, signal monitoring, or targeted severance during a crisis.
• Gray-Zone Probing: This activity forces coastal states like Taiwan and the Philippines to expend maritime assets monitoring, escorting, and warning off vessels, testing national rules of engagement without crossing the threshold of kinetic conflict.

Legal Analysis: Navigating UNCLOS, EEZ Jurisdictions, and the Debate Over Loitering vs. Transit

The legal classification of a foreign vessel operating near critical subsea infrastructure—or transiting strategic maritime chokepoints—lies at the intersection of conflicting interpretations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Determining whether an operational activity is legal or illegal depends heavily on the maritime zone, the nature of the operations, and whether a state is acting as a coastal state protecting its sovereign rights or a flag state exercising navigational freedoms.

The Competing Perspectives: Western Coastal Claims vs. Chinese Counter-Arguments

The Core Legal Friction: Continuous Transit vs. Stationary Loitering

At the center of this geopolitical debate is a fundamental disagreement over vessel conduct and speed within EEZs:

• The Speed and Purpose Argument: Coastal states argue that when a vessel reduces speed, alters course erratically, or holds a stationary position directly over a known subsea cable corridor, it loses the protection of "expeditious transit" and enters the realm of unauthorized survey or gray-zone interference.
• The Hydrographic & Military Survey Loophole: Flag states often exploit UNCLOS ambiguities, as the convention does not explicitly define the boundary between Marine Scientific Research (which requires coastal state consent in an EEZ) and military hydrographic surveying or intelligence gathering (which flag states claim is an unrestricted high-seas freedom).

Conclusion: Whether an encounter is viewed as a lawful exercise of high-seas navigation or an illegal infringement on coastal state jurisdiction depends on which legal doctrine a government applies.
While coastal nations view loitering over subsea fiber as an illegal, unauthorized survey targeting critical infrastructure, researching states defend such operations by citing navigational freedoms and pointing to similar military operations conducted by Western allies across regional EEZs.

II. The Multi-Layered Defense: How to Protect Seabed Arteries

Defending subsea fiber against physical sabotage or intelligence probing requires a integrated defense matrix combining commercial sensing technology with state sovereign enforcement.

1. What Cable Owners & Consortiums Must Do

a) Deploy Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS): Optoelectronic interrogators turn active or dark fiber within the cable into continuous, long-range acoustic sensors. DAS can detect nearby vessel engine signatures, dropped anchors, bottom trawling, or underwater submersibles in real time.

b) Geofenced AIS Integration: Automated systems merge vessel Automatic Identification System (AIS) data with network operations centers (NOCs), triggering immediate security alerts when a vessel slows down or loiters inside a cable corridor.

c) Physical Hardening & Mesh Redundancy: Deep-burying cables 2–3 meters into the seabed where feasible and routing bandwidth across redundant, geographically diverse paths so that a single severed trunk does not cut off national connectivity.

2. What Coastal States Must Do

a) Establish Statutory Cable Protection Zones (CPZs): Enact laws declaring CPZs around critical cable routes, making bottom-trawling, commercial dredging, dropping anchor, or unauthorized loitering explicitly illegal

b) Strategic Transparency ("Naming and Shaming"): Publicly release Coast Guard video, AIS tracking logs, and spatial data when foreign research or commercial ships loiter over cables. Exposing gray-zone operations imposes diplomatic and political costs on foreign aggressors.

c) Public-Private Intel Fusion Centers: Establish direct data pipelines between private Cable Landing Stations (CLS) and naval/coast guard command centers to allow rapid dispatch of patrol ships or aerial drones when an anomaly is detected.

3. Operational Case Study: How Taiwan and the Philippines Responded to the PLCN Incident

The recent loitering of a Chinese-flagged research vessel directly over the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) provided a live operational test of how regional coastal states respond to subsea gray-zone threats.

The vessel's tracked path traversed three distinct maritime legal zones: Taiwan's EEZ, the Philippines' EEZ, and the High Seas.
Both Taiwan and the Philippines deployed a combination of active maritime enforcement, strategic transparency, and regulatory domain awareness to counter the activity.

Key Takeaway: The joint response highlights that while regional coast guards lack the legal authority to seize foreign ships in international waters or EEZs without evidence of physical damage, real-time physical interception combined with public media exposure remains the most effective immediate countermeasure against subsea gray-zone probing.

III. The Cartographic Illusion: Schematic "Subway Maps" vs. Spatial Reality

A major vulnerability in subsea infrastructure security stems from a widespread public and policy misconception: the belief that accessible global maps of subsea cables already exist.

The "Subway Map" Fallacy

Platforms like TeleGeography's Submarine Cable Map and Infrapedia are widely used, highly valuable commercial tools.
However, they are not geographical maps.
They are stylized, schematic diagrams—functionally identical to a metro system map.

• They display logical connectivity (Point A connects to Point B).
• They do not reflect true geographic coordinates, bathymetric alignments, or actual physical trajectories across territorial seas, Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), or the High Seas.

The Missing Public Spatial Layer

To navigate, anchor, or protect infrastructure safely, mariners and security forces require Route Position Lists (RPLs)—centimeter-accurate geographic datasets.
Today, actual RPL spatial data is fragmented into three locked domains:

• Proprietary Commercial Vaults: Held privately by cable owners, survey firms, and installers who treat detailed bathymetric paths as trade secrets.
• Paid Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs): Encoded into official marine navigation databases (managed by national hydrographic offices like UKHO or NOAA) accessible primarily through expensive shipboard ECDIS equipment.
• Siloed Regulatory Filings: Buried inside static PDF attachments in environmental or regulatory applications (e.g., U.S. FCC filings).

IV. The ICPC Vision vs. Spatial Silos

The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) have long advocated for integrating subsea cables into standard nautical charting (under IHO Resolution 4/1967).
The goal was straightforward: mariners cannot avoid hazards they cannot see.

While the ICPC framework successfully pushed for cable lines on official nautical charts, this data remains locked inside closed maritime navigational software.
There is no open-access, global, GIS-compatible spatial layer showing the world's physical digital arteries.

“The ICPC recommends that governments and industry continue to identify submarine cables on nautical charts in a timely and accurate manner in order to ensure maritime safety and protection of global critical infrastructure.”International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) 

V. The "Open Cable" Paradox & Call to Action

Over the past decade, the telecommunications industry underwent a revolution driven by the Open Cable architecture model.
Hyperscalers and consortia dismantled proprietary vendor lock-in, embracing open optical spectrum, carrier-neutral landing stations, and interoperable wet-plant interfaces.

Yet, this openness stops at the shoreline.
The physical paths of these cables remain hidden behind commercial secrecy, regulatory silos, or abstract web vector graphics.

 

Why Hiding Physical Routes No Longer Works

The legacy justification for keeping cable paths secret was security through obscurity.
However, this logic has collapsed:

• Hostile state actors already possess the technology to find them. Advanced sonar, satellite RF tracking, and oceanographic research ships easily map cables regardless of whether the RPL is public.
• Commercial ships break them by accident. Fishermen and merchant captains drag anchors and nets through cables precisely because accurate, real-time spatial representations are not integrated into basic, accessible charting tools.
• Security forces are blind. Coast Guards and allied navies attempting to monitor gray-zone loitering lack an integrated, open GIS overlay combining live AIS vessel tracks with physical cable lines.

Conclusion: A Global Call for Open Seabed Mapping

You cannot build a resilient, open digital global society on hidden physical roads.
The world maps its physical roads, highways, and bridge infrastructure openly to ensure public safety, urban planning, and defense.
Subsea fiber-optic cables—the highways of global civilization—require the same spatial transparency.

A landmark step in international coordination was the creation of the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience (ITU IAB), established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in partnership with the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).
Bringing together governments, regulatory authorities, telecom operators, and maritime experts, the ITU IAB operates through specialized Working Groups targeting deployment, repair logistics, risk mitigation, and route diversity.
However, standardized, open seabed cartography remains the critical missing link in global infrastructure security.

Strategic Roadmap: Integrating Open Mapping into the ITU IAB Action Plan

1. Adopt Open Seabed Mapping as an ITU IAB Core Action Item: The ITU IAB should formally incorporate open subsea cartography into its global resilience agenda—specifically within Working Group 2 (Risk Identification, Monitoring and Mitigation). By establishing a UN-backed open GIS framework, the ITU IAB can lead the shift from closed navigational silos to transparent global spatial awareness.
2. Fulfill the ICPC Vision via a UN-Backed Open Global Cable Registry: The ITU, International Maritime Organization (IMO), International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), and ICPC should collaborate under the ITU IAB banner to build a standardized, open-access global GIS layer for all commercial subsea cables across Territorial Seas, EEZs, and the High Seas.
3. Declassify Non-Sensitive Geographic RPLs: National regulatory bodies (such as the U.S. FCC, European BEREC, and regional telecom authorities) should mandate that non-confidential physical Route Position Lists (RPLs) be published in standard, open GIS formats (GeoJSON/KML) as a condition for granting subsea landing licenses.
4. Unify Open Spectrum with Open Geography: The telecommunications industry must broaden its definition of "Open Cable." True digital resilience requires pairing open optical spectrum and disaggregated hardware with open cartographic visibility on the global map.

By taking up open seabed cartography as a primary mandate, the ITU Advisory Body and global stakeholders can eliminate gray-zone ambiguities, empower maritime security forces, and protect the physical circulatory system of the global internet.

“True digital openness requires physical visibility: Open Cables must no longer remain hidden beneath the waves.”