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.”

Google now owns the Atlantic Ocean

Map of submarine cables with British Empire in 1902

source : Atlantic cables maps 

From Pulse by Sunil Tagare

I hate to say I called it but yes, I did about 5 years ago.

The idea was very simple. Instead of running 10 submarine cables across the Atlantic, how about creating 2 Guams in the Atlantic Ocean: one in Bermuda and one Azores with a loop and then aggregate a bunch of cables on both continents?

That would save about 70% of CAPEX and more importantly make the network far more resilient and increase security by creating loops within both the continents.

This was my idea long time ago.

In fact, when Google first announced the Nuvem cable, they had Bermuda as a landing party but not Azores. 

I wrote to them and urged them to add Azores which to their credit, they did almost immediately. 

 

 

pc: Google; First announcement of the Nuvem Cable

 

pc: OpenCables, Inc.; My vision of a trans-Atlantic network

I have to admit.

Google has not only embraced the concept but they have gone far beyond my own expectations.

They announced a bunch of cables recently called Americas Connect.

 

pc: Google; Note: Map not to scale. Azores not labeled--maybe I should draw the maps for them

 

pc: Google; They really need to change their graphics dude or is it their AI rebelling?

 

pc: Google

 

pc: Google

I think this is brilliant.

I think the brilliance is that they have connected Panama to the Atlantic Ocean which is connected to Chile and the US West Coast.

That changes everything for South America connectivity especially as it pertains to connectivity to Europe.

Also, this is the first time, the West Coast and the East Coast of the US can be reached directly by a submarine cable. This may go unnoticed but is very important in times of disaster recovery situations.

With this masterstroke, Google now owns the Atlantic Ocean.

No one else will be able to compete with them on price, latency, resilience, security or connectivity.

Which brings up an interesting question.

Will Google allow 3rd party cables to connect to their Bermuda and Azores cable stations?

Basically are they open cable landing stations?

I had a long talk with folks in Bermuda and Azores governments and both were non-committal about the Open CLS issue.

Will Google sell the Bermuda to Azores fibers along with the Open CLS?

I doubt it.

Google's complete control over the Atlantic will shape the future of the trans-Atlantic AI industry for decades to come.

It will be impossible for anyone else to recreate what they have done especially since they have Bermuda and Azores in their pockets -- just like Cable & Wireless milked Bermuda and Azores for decades.

Also, they are just getting started.

Wait for significant more cable announcements on this route -- which will make it harder and harder for anyone to replicate this.

Interestingly, when I visited the submarine cable museum in Lisbon, I saw the ancient telegraph cable maps.

Guess what?

Azores was the central point for all the cables coming in from North America before they got distributed to every country in Europe.

Just a fun fact for the submarine cable nerds.

 

Links :

• Pulse : Cable Routes as Geopolitics and Power 

The wave everyone thinks is AI

Matahi Drollet at Teahupo'o filmed by Manea Fabisch

 

Tereva David at Teahupo'o filmed by Manea Fabisch

Man lives alone on island for 33 years to ‘avoid talking to people’

From Surfer by Dashel Pierson

 

When Mauro Morandi’s catamaran broke down off Sardinia, he chose a different life and spent three decades alone on Budelli’s pink-sand island.

• Mauro Morandi lived alone on Budelli island for 33 years, avoiding society.
• He maintained the island’s ecology, educating visitors about its natural beauty.
• “I’m the living proof that a second, new life is possible,” Morandi once said.

The modern age.

Cellphones, social media, consumerism, politics, war, and so on.

It can be exhausting, at times, simply existing in the world today.

As Jack Kerouac wrote in Big Sur: “We all agree it’s too big to keep up with, that we’re surrounded by life, that we’ll never understand it, so we center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it’s empty I run out of the car and buy another one, period.”

For one man, he had enough.

In 1989, Mauro Morandi sailed for the South Pacific, but he didn’t make it. Instead, his catamaran broke down, and he ended up on the small island of Budelli off the coast of Sardinia.

 

Isola de Budelli with the GeoGarage platform (IIM ENC)

 

He decided to stay.

Why? To “avoid talking to anyone.”

A former teacher, Morandi wound up living on the island for 33 years.

He stayed in an abandoned World War II shelter, as the sole inhabitant of Budelli.
Thus, he was dubbed the “Italian Robinson Crusoe.”
It just so happened that the island’s caretaker was about to retire, so when Morandi arrived, he took over.

He kept the island clean, keeping its iconic pink sand beaches pristine, and often taught day-trippers to Budelli about the native ecosystem.

“I’m so used to living in the middle of nature,” he told the Guardian. 

“What would I do back in Modena? Play cards and go to bars like other people in their 80s? Give over! The thought of going back to live in a society that treats nature badly is very distressing. Nature needs to be loved and respected.”

Eventually, Morandi’s hermetic dream came to an end, when the island became a national park, and he was evicted.

Morandi moved into a one-bedroom apartment on La Maddalena, a large island off Sardinia.

And following a fall, his health started deteriorating.

He struggled with life back in the real world after over three decades of isolation.

“I became so used to the silence. Now it’s continuous noise,” he said.
Then, in early 2025, he died at the age of 85.
“I’m the living proof that a second, new life is possible,” Morandi once said. 

“You can always start all over again, even if you’re over 80, because there are other things you can experience, a totally different world. I’m happy and I have rediscovered the pleasure of living the good life and enjoying everyday comforts.”
Rest in peace.

 

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Meet the man who has lived alone on this island for 28 years