The Pacific Ocean is running a fever. Why that’s an ominous sign.

 

A massive marine heat wave covers the Pacific Ocean.
It could contribute to severe storms and extreme heat across the United States this year.
(Ben Noll/The Washington Post; NOAA/Coral Reef Watch)-

 

From WashingtonPost by Ben Noll

A marine heat wave covering an area eight times the size of the United States could soon fuel serious storms and extreme heat.

 

Across the Pacific Ocean, there’s a massive marine heat wave covering an area more than eight times the size of the contiguous United States — and it could have profound ripple effects for weather events around the globe in the coming weeks and months.

This area makes up about 13.5 percent of Earth’s total surface, stretching from the Philippines to Peru — where people are flocking to the beach during the Southern Hemisphere winter — and northward to the coasts of Hawaii and California.

Marine heat waves are a strong, sprawling and sustained warming in the ocean, sometimes near the surface and other times extending deep.
They are ranked on a scale from 1 (moderate) to 5 (beyond extreme), reflecting both their intensity and duration.

The enormous Pacific marine heat wave formed as two separate marine heat waves combined: one in the North Pacific and another associated with a developing super El Niño along the equator.
While warmer seas might sound nice to some beachgoers, what happens in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean — and this marine heat wave is an ominous sign for weather patterns to come.
“Months and months of warmth could mean stark impacts this winter and next spring,” said climate scientist Dillon Amaya, who has been closely monitoring the warmth near California.

How this ocean fever could affect the weather

 
Two significant weather events in the next two weeks are connected to this marine heat wave: a super typhoon in the western Pacific Ocean and the potential for a profound heat dome in the western United States during mid-July.

The typhoon, named Bavi, will be powered by the bathtub-like warmth of the western Pacific.
This dangerous storm will pass near the Northern Mariana Islands, north of Guam, on Monday local time and could also bring destructive impacts to Taiwan and China late in the week.
Meanwhile, thunderstorms bubbling over the marine heat wave could promote the formation of a powerful heat dome thousands of miles away in the western U.S.
during mid-July, sending temperatures soaring there.

Defense Department meteorologist Eric Webb said in an X post that this pattern could “greatly increase heat/wildfire risks north of New Mexico and Arizona.” That’s an area where wildfires have recently been raging.
But there may be much more extreme weather after that.
In a recent live stream, climate scientist Daniel Swain said the very warm Pacific seas are expected to drive sea levels 6 inches to 2 feet higher near California.

Winds from storms this fall and winter will elevate the sea even more, potentially resulting in dangerous rises of 2 to 3 feet or more near the California coast.
“This is the time for local governments, for county governments and for the state government to start to prepare for a significant likelihood of much higher than average sea levels, more disruptive coastal flooding and potentially record-breaking coastal water levels during winter storm events and king tide events,” Swain said.
“This coming winter, right now, does look like one where there’s an increased likelihood of historically unusual to unprecedented rain and storm events,” Swain said.

But he stressed that while the odds for such scenarios are higher, they are not guaranteed.

 

An intensifying El Niño and marine heat wave in the Pacific Ocean could fuel serious storm events in the United States this year.
(Video: Ben Noll; ECMWF)

 

California isn’t the only place that could experience such profound effects.
The vast amount of heat stretching across the Pacific will be released into the atmosphere above, turbocharging the subtropical jet stream from fall into winter.
That may form a storm highway across the southern and eastern United States, elevating the potential for flooding rainfall and severe thunderstorms.

This ocean fever will have global consequences, too.
As sea temperatures rise, evaporation increases, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere — which is fuel for extreme rain events.
“Water vapor amounts go hand in hand with sea surface temperatures, mostly,” said climate scientist Kevin Trenberth.

That extra moisture is carried by winds that circulate around high- and low-pressure cells and can be carried thousands of miles from where it originated.
Following a deadly June heat dome, a marine heat wave also recently formed near Europe, including across the Mediterranean Sea.
More extreme heat will affect that region into mid-July, with the unusually warm waters helping to reinforce the heat.

The area covered by marine heat waves is surging

Marine heat waves form in different ways.
Sometimes, winds weaken and the sea turns calmer, preventing colder water from being churned up to the surface from below.
Other times, changes in atmospheric circulation patterns cause more sunshine and fewer clouds, heating up the sea.
Changing ocean currents can play a role, too.

The one currently in the Pacific is linked to a natural climate variation called the Pacific Meridional Mode, or PMM, that formed because of weaker winds and less evaporation.

Amaya said that as El Niño continues to grow, it can combine with the PMM to generate massive swaths of heat.
These warm ocean blobs are growing in both coverage and intensity as the climate changes.
“The heat capacity and mobility of water makes the ocean the main sink of excess heat from human-induced heating of the planet, mainly from increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Trenberth said.

How the coverage and intensity of marine heat waves have changed

The portion of the global ocean experiencing marine heat waves has more than tripled since the late 1980s, increasing from about 9 percent to more than 30 percent.
Over that same period, the global coverage of strong to beyond extreme (Category 2 to Category 5) marine heat waves has increased nearly sixfold.


Marine heat waves also spike during El Niño events.
In January 2024, during an El Niño event that contributed to the planet’s warmest year on record, more than 46 percent of the global oceans simultaneously experienced a marine heat wave — the highest amount on record.
Currently, more than 37 percent of the global ocean is covered by a marine heat wave, but a record may be set this year or next as this ocean fever — and its potential impact — intensifies.

Goblin shark caught on camera for the first time ever

Scientists have captured the first-ever footage of a goblin shark swimming deep beneath the ocean's surface, providing an unprecedented look at one of Earth's most mysterious predators.

Goblin sharks are rarely seen alive, making this discovery a major breakthrough for marine researchers.

Their unusual appearance and extendable jaws have fascinated scientists for decades, and this footage reveals how these ancient sharks move through the darkness of the deep sea.

One of the ocean's most mysterious sharks caught on camera in world-first: 

One of the ocean's most elusive creatures, described by scientists as "the ugliest shark on the planet", has been filmed alive in its deep-sea habitat for the first time.
The footage captures goblin sharks swimming at depths previously unknown for the species, extending the species’ known range into the Central Pacific, and revealing just how little scientists still know about the deep sea.

The first underwater jet pack designed for hands-free propulsion

With Kikfin, you steer by tilting your head and control speed with a wireless glove remote.

The new geography of subsea cables

photograph: reuters

From The Economist

The AI boom and geopolitics are rewiring Asia’s oceans
New cables between data centres are avoiding China and chokepoints

“The seabed is a battlefield,” Australia’s defence minister told a room full of admirals and generals in Singapore at the end of May.
Richard Marles, citing several subsea cables that have been cut in the Baltic Sea and around Taiwan in recent years, joined 16 of his counterparts in announcing plans to protect the submarine tendrils of the digital world: the nearly 700 communications cables which mostly lie exposed on the floor of the world’s oceans.

Governments and armed forces in Asia have only recently awoken to the importance of subsea cables.
Some of their fears of subterfuge may be overblown; to date, no conclusive evidence has been shared to suggest that the cuts highlighted by Mr Marles are sabotage.
But they are right about the vulnerability of these arteries of commerce.
And the private firms which build and operate almost all of the world’s subsea cables are not waiting for governments to better secure them.
They are increasingly taking steps on their own to avoid Asia’s most contested waters.

Asia and Australia are now connected to Europe by fibre-optic cables which tend to hug the coastlines of the Asian continent before heading up the Red Sea.
But a combination of the ai boom and geopolitics is rerouting cable traffic across the Indian and Pacific oceans.
This new geography avoids chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca and contested waters like the South China Sea.
Much of it avoids South-East Asia entirely, running from the Middle East and India to Australia and then onward through the Pacific Islands to America.

 

The first cable to run the new route was laid in 2022 between Oman and Australia, with spurs to the Anglo-American military base at Diego Garcia and the Cocos Islands, a tiny Australian territory in the Indian Ocean.
Then, last year, Google announced that Christmas Island, another Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, would become a hub for a new cable network between Australia and the Middle East.
Fibre will run from Oman via the Maldives to Christmas Island, and then onward to Australia.
Meta’s $10bn Project Waterworth, a global cable network still in development, looks set to follow a similar course in the Indian Ocean.

The first shift remapping cable routes is a change in who pays for them.
Subsea cables are expensive.
To defray the cost, for most of the last few decades big national telecoms firms would form consortia to build them.
Back in 1999, one of the first big fibre-optic cables between Europe and Asia to come online, known as sea-me-we 3, cost $1.3bn and had 92 consortium partners.
Financing and planning a cable among so many firms tended to increase costs and delay laying it.
Once it was funded, the number of partners involved pulled the route close to the Asian continent where the bulk of the customers were located.

But the ai boom is scrambling the economics of the subsea cable business and changing its geography.
Over the past ten years, internet giants have begun to finance and build cables single-handedly.
That has simplified the fundraising and planning process, and cut the lead-time for new cable projects.
Google invested in its first cable in 2008.
It has since funded at least 34 more, 18 of which it owns without partners.
Increasingly, firms like Meta, Google and Microsoft are building cables not to connect population centres but to connect their data centres.

And build them they are.
By one estimate, the next four years will see an average of $4bn a year in new cable investment, the bulk of it by so-called hyperscalers seeking to win the ai race.
While satellite internet service from firms such as Starlink is getting cheaper, it is still orders of magnitude more expensive to beam each gigabyte of data into space than it is to push light down a cable, and is likely to be so for many years yet.
As a result, subsea cables still carry 99% of the world’s intercontinental internet traffic.

As the subsea cable market consolidates vertically, it is expanding geographically.
Unshackled from the need to remain close to population centres, ships are laying subsea cables across the open ocean more than ever before.
The new routes have been drawn up to avoid seabed governed either by China or by governments that might seek to extract payment for laying or repairing a cable across a chokepoint, such as the Indonesian straits.

Geopolitical risk has become particularly acute in the South China Sea, where China has yet to effect full control on the surface but exercises de facto sovereignty over the seabed.
Under international law, states are not supposed to interfere with repairs to cables outside their territorial sea.
But repairs to any cables within China’s “nine-dash” line, which stretches over a thousand kilometres from China’s coasts (and which it claims as the extent of its waters) require approval from officials in Beijing.

Cables transiting through chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca run similar risks, says Samuel Bashfield, who studies subsea cables at La Trobe University in Australia.
Constantly shifting rules set by littoral countries like Malaysia and Indonesia are designed to extract value from cable operations through measures like requiring the use of local ships.
These can be expensive annoyances.
But recent musings by Indonesia’s cash-strapped president and finance minister about how the country could make money from its position astride some of the world’s great sea-lanes suggest that more aggressive measures could be coming.

To avoid these risky shoals, more and more internet traffic is simply going around them.
Google and Meta’s new networks run instead from the Middle East through Australia and onwards to Japan and South Korea or America.
In the Pacific, cables increasingly use Guam as a hub to connect American allies in Asia.
These new routes are part of an increasingly bifurcated internet infrastructure beneath the waves: no new cables between America and China have been approved since Barack Obama was in office.

More than a boundary: why Japan-Philippines maritime talks matter for China

A television screen shows a news report on patrol and law‑enforcement operations around Taiwan conducted by the China Coast Guard, at a restaurant in Beijing in late December. | REUTERS

From JapanTimes by Gabriel Dominguez

At first glance, Japan and the Philippines’ decision to begin negotiations on a maritime boundary appears to be a routine exercise in international law.

But China’s unusually forceful response signals that the talks are about far more than drawing a line at sea.

Beijing argues the talks infringe on maritime rights it claims through Taiwan and sees discussions as part of a broader effort by two key U.S. allies to deepen strategic coordination in waters central to China’s security interests.

When Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. used a late-May summit in Tokyo to launch the bilateral delimitation talks, China reacted swiftly.

China not only declared the negotiations “illegal, null and void” and lodged diplomatic protests, but also backed its rhetoric with action, deploying coast guard vessels for what it described as “law-enforcement patrols” east of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

By extending its operations south of Yonaguni Island into waters Tokyo considers part of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), Beijing underscored its determination to contest the talks both diplomatically and at sea.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), such negotiations are routine whenever states have overlapping EEZs and continental shelves.

 

EEZ with the GeoGarage platform

More than routine talks

So why has Beijing reacted so strongly?

The answer lies in the unique geography of the waters east of Taiwan, where international law, the self-ruled island’s contested status and intensifying strategic competition converge.

What would otherwise be a routine delimitation has become a contest over how one of the Indo-Pacific’s most sensitive maritime corridors should be governed.

A China Coast Guard vessel sails near a Japan Coast Guard vessel around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands last September. | HITOSHI NAKAMA / VIA REUTERS

Japan and the Philippines do not share a land border, but their EEZs and continental shelves overlap because Japan’s southwestern islands and the Philippines’ northernmost islands lie less than 400 nautical miles (740 kilometers) apart.

Taiwan, meanwhile, sits almost directly between Japan and the Philippines.

Any eventual boundary would almost certainly pass through waters where maritime entitlements generated by the island overlap with those claimed by Tokyo and Manila.

Because Beijing considers those entitlements as belonging to China, the negotiations inevitably intersect with the Taiwan issue, transforming an otherwise routine legal exercise into one with significant strategic and political implications.

Why Beijing is so alarmed

China argues that Taiwan is an inalienable part of its territory and that the maritime rights generated by the democratic island therefore fall under Beijing’s jurisdiction.

From that perspective, any boundary negotiated in these waters cannot legitimately proceed without China’s participation.

Japan and the Philippines reject that premise. While both acknowledge Beijing’s “One China” position, neither recognizes Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

By negotiating under UNCLOS, they are treating the issue as a bilateral maritime delimitation rather than one requiring China’s participation.

That framework does not require every potentially interested party to participate in the same negotiation, and such agreements routinely state that they are without prejudice to third-party rights.

If concluded, a boundary deal would reinforce a framework for managing overlapping maritime claims while leaving third-party rights formally unresolved.

The talks are designed to “cement Japan-Philippine maritime cooperation” by clarifying the boundary and facilitating closer political, military and economic ties, said James Kraska, an expert on international maritime law at the U.S. Naval War College.

Why now?

Japan and the Philippines have claimed overlapping maritime zones for decades, yet neither prioritized boundary talks until recently.

What has changed is the regional security environment.

A China Coast Guard ship is seen on the horizon through a telescopic view from Philippine-occupied Thitu Island in the disputed South China Sea in February. | REUTERS

China’s sustained maritime pressure — including expansive South China Sea claims, growing coast guard operations around disputed features and repeated incursions into waters surrounding the Japanese-controlled but Chinese-claimed Senkaku Islands — has led Tokyo and Manila to deepen defense ties at an accelerated pace.

Once centered on development assistance, the Japan-Philippine relationship has evolved into a comprehensive security partnership encompassing a visiting-forces agreement, defense equipment exports, closer military and coast guard cooperation and negotiations toward an expanded intelligence-sharing pact.

In that context, maritime delimitation has become another pillar of the rapidly expanding security partnership rather than merely a legal exercise. Clarifying the maritime boundary between the quasi-allies, Kraska said, removes lingering uncertainty and facilitates closer cooperation across political, military and economic domains.

‘First island chain’ legal geography

A maritime boundary agreement would establish a clearer legal framework in the strategically important waters linking the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

Far from simply drawing a line at sea, such a deal would contribute to the gradual alignment of the region’s legal geography with its evolving security architecture along the “first island chain” — the string of islands stretching from Japan toward Borneo.

By clarifying jurisdiction over fisheries, law enforcement and coast guard operations, a final agreement could complement allied coordination and maritime domain awareness in one of the Indo-Pacific’s most sensitive maritime corridors.

The strategic importance of these waters has grown as the Chinese Navy pushes farther into the western Pacific. Unlike the shallow and congested Taiwan Strait, the deeper waters of the Philippine Sea provide the Chinese Navy with a key route into the wider Pacific.

Defense analysts have long regarded this maritime space as critical to Beijing’s naval operations beyond the first island chain, which is also why strengthening coordination across the same corridor has become an increasingly important objective for Tokyo, Washington and Manila.

From diplomacy to ‘gray-zone’ competition

China’s response suggests it intends to contest not only the eventual outcome of the negotiations but also the premise that Japan and the Philippines can negotiate over those waters without Beijing.

The recent coast guard deployment suggests Beijing is increasingly willing to extend its “gray-zone” activities east of Taiwan, reinforcing its claims through regular deployments while contesting actions it believes undermine them.

A Taiwan Coast Guard ship patrols near Dadan Island, with China's Xiamen city visible in the background, last October. | REUTERS

Kraska suggests that China’s opposition ultimately reflects a broader objective: resisting developments that bring Japan and the Philippines closer together strategically. Viewed in that light, Beijing’s reaction is directed not only at the legal implications of a maritime boundary but also at what a deal would represent for the evolving regional balance.

Taiwan’s delicate balancing act

The negotiations also present a dilemma for Taiwan.

Taipei has generally welcomed closer security cooperation among Japan, the Philippines and other like-minded partners in response to growing Chinese military pressure.

At the same time, the island maintains its own longstanding maritime claims in the waters east of Taiwan. Openly endorsing a Japan-Philippines boundary could be interpreted as weakening those claims, while objecting to the negotiations would risk undermining cooperation with two of its most important partners.

Instead, Taiwan has adopted a dual-track approach. While rejecting Beijing’s claims and supporting closer cooperation with regional partners, its Foreign Ministry has also sought assurances through its representative offices in Tokyo and Manila that any eventual agreement would not prejudice Taiwan’s maritime rights or existing fisheries arrangements.

A parallel transformation

Much attention has focused on the military dimension of allied cooperation along the first island chain — from missile deployments and expanded access agreements to integrated operational planning and sophisticated joint exercises.

Less noticed is the parallel construction of a legal and institutional architecture driven by coast guard cooperation, reciprocal access agreements, intelligence sharing and maritime boundary negotiations.

While these initiatives do not resolve competing maritime claims or the complex legal questions surrounding Taiwan, they demonstrate how institutional cooperation has become a critical feature of the region’s security landscape.

The unfolding negotiations reveal that competition along the first island chain is no longer just about missile deployments and military exercises; it is increasingly a contest over the legal and institutional order governing these strategically important waters.

For years, Beijing has relied on sustained coast guard deployments and other gray-zone activities to reinforce its maritime claims. Japan and the Philippines, by contrast, are seeking to clarify jurisdiction and deepen bilateral cooperation through maritime delimitation and other institutional mechanisms.

As the negotiations progress, the waters east of Taiwan are becoming a testing ground for two competing approaches to managing the regional maritime order: one grounded primarily in sustained operational presence, the other in legal and institutional coordination.

 

Links :

• Bloomberg : Japan protest's China's Maritime claims after bomber flights
• SCMP : Chinese vessels shadow US-Philippine naval drills in South China Sea near disputed shoal
• Reuters : China patrols waters east of Taiwan in response to Japan, Philippine maritime border talks 

Map shows US cities that could go underwater if sea levels rise 3 meters

In a total meltdown scenario, global sea levels would rise by a maximum of around 66 meters/217 feet. Anything shown beyond this level in this video is a theoretical simulation to explore the extreme limits of our geography.

From Newsweek by Jasmine Laws

Scientists are warning that the collapse of Antarctica’s massive “doomsday glacier” could eventually redraw large parts of America’s coastline, threatening major cities from Florida to California with severe flooding and rising seas.

Researchers say the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is becoming increasingly unstable, raising fears that its eventual collapse could contribute to dramatic long-term sea level rise.

While the glacier itself could add around 65 centimeters (roughly 2 feet) to global sea levels, some scientists worry it could destabilize much larger sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—potentially contributing to sea level rise approaching 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) over time.

Such a rise would dramatically alter large stretches of the U.S. coastline, threatening homes, infrastructure, airports and major cities across several states.

Glacier On The ‘Cusp of Collapse’

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA image. Right now, Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets both contribute under or near 1 millimeter to sea-level rise every year; they each contain enough stored ice to drive up ocean levels by 20 and 200 feet, respectively.

David Holland, a professor of mathematics and atmosphere/ocean science at New York University, told Newsweek that the glacier is on the “cusp of collapse,” and that he was “concerned” about it.

“It is held back on its sides by the buttressing provided by the ice shelf in front of it, which is now about to collapse,” he explained.

The glacier is also held back by “a hump in the seafloor at its current grounding line,” he added, which he said “may be next to go, given the high rate of melt occurring there.”

The result of the glacier’s collapse would be vast. Holland said that “certainly, low-lying cities and states in the U.S. would experience floods,” while many other cities and countries would “undergo stress” as well.

Safe embed will be rendered here
Thwaites Glacier—Major Changes Between 2001 and 2019
Service URL: https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/29052478/embed

 
Which American Cities Could Be Flooded?

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projection maps show that a 3-meter rise in sea levels would inundate major parts of the U.S. coastline, with some of the country’s most populated urban areas facing chronic flooding or partial submersion.
Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast

Florida would be among the hardest-hit states. Large parts of the coastline could disappear beneath rising seas, while cities including Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Panama City would face severe flooding risks.

Large stretches of low-lying coastal communities across the state could also become uninhabitable.

Large sections of the Gulf Coast would also be exposed.

Cities and communities along the Texas coastline near Galveston Bay, Freeport and Surfside Beach could see extensive inundation, while low-lying parts of Louisiana, including areas around New Orleans, would remain especially vulnerable.

Other coastal cities at risk include Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Wilmington, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; and parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Mississippi.

New York City would face widespread flooding risks across parts of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Lower Manhattan.

Critical infrastructure, including Newark Liberty International Airport and nearby transport links, could also be affected. MetLife Stadium in New Jersey—one of the venues for the 2026 FIFA World Cup—lies within an area vulnerable to flooding under NOAA’s projections.
West Coast

A screenshot of an NOAA map showing which U.S. cities would be underwater if there was a 10-foot sea level rise.

In California, areas around the San Francisco Bay, Oakland, San Mateo and parts of Southern California near San Diego and Oxnard would also face major impacts.

Notable parts of the landscape and wildlife reserves could also be affected, including Big Lagoon, the Brush Creek/Lagoon Lake Wetlands and Coastal Dunes Natural Preserve, the Ventura County Game Reserve as well as vast amounts of the California Coastal National Monument.

Why Scientists Are Worried by the Thwaites Glacier

Thwaites is the widest glacier on the planet, stretching around 120 kilometers (75 miles), and its basin measures around 192,000 kilometers squared, meaning it is larger than the state of Florida.

Over the years, Thwaites—located in West Antarctica—has been losing ice at an increasing pace, and since 2000 the glacier has experienced a net loss of more than 1 trillion tons of ice.

The tongue of the glacier—which is the extension that floats out over water—has continued to fracture and separate from the ice shelf in recent years, as images from NASA show.

The floating ice is now melting, given that the seawater is a few degrees above freezing as warmer water temperatures have recently been recorded in the region.

 

Links :

• CNN : Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. Relocation planning must start now, scientists say 

WSC: Nearly 1,500 containers lost at sea during 2025

From Safety4Sea

The World Shipping Council (WSC) has published its Containers Lost at Sea report, finding that container loss rose significantly last year.

In 2025, an estimated 1,478 containers were lost at sea out of approximately 280 million transported, equivalent to 0.0005 percent of global container movements.

While this represents an increase from 576 containers lost in 2024 and is above the recent three-year average, it remains within the range of historical variation and continues to reflect a very small proportion of overall containerized trade.

A notable feature of 2025 was the concentration of losses in a small number of incidents.

One major incident alone accounted for 640 containers lost, or approximately 43 percent of the annual total. This underscores the continued influence of isolated, large-scale events in shaping yearly outcomes.

Encouragingly, 128 containers were reported as recovered, reflecting improved response coordination and collaboration following incidents.

The long-term trend continues to show that container losses remain a very small fraction of total global container movements.

While year-to-year figures fluctuate, often driven by extreme weather and isolated events, the overall trajectory remains stable and significantly below earlier peak years.

World Shipping Council remains committed to transparency, data-driven safety improvements, and collaborative action across the supply chain.

The introduction of mandatory IMO reporting requirements from 2026 marks a major step forward in enhancing global data accuracy and supporting further safety improvements.

Key findings and results

• 1,478 containers lost at sea in 2025, out of over 280 million transported (0.0005%)
• 128 containers recovered, the highest recovery figure recorded to date
• Losses driven by one major incident (640 containers)
• Extreme weather events and fire remain leading causes of container loss
• Key drivers of 2025 losses

Impact of major incidents

The 2025 data again demonstrates that annual totals are heavily influenced by isolated high-impact events:A single vessel loss incident accounted for 43% of containers overboard (640 containers), significantly increasing the annual total.
A handful of additional incidents involving severe weather, stack collapse, or cargo shift contributed notable losses that drove up the annual total.

This pattern is consistent with previous years where major incidents, rather than widespread systemic issues, drive annual fluctuations.

Weather and ocean conditions

Weather remains a key factor in container loss incidents, and 2025 saw challenging conditions across several major shipping routes.

While the total number of storms globally was not significantly higher than average, the year was marked by:Warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures, which can intensify storms and increase wave energy.
Periods of more severe and less predictable weather, particularly in the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
Regional conditions that created difficult operating environments, including strong winter storms and unusual ocean patterns.

These factors increased the likelihood of incidents when vessels encountered heavy weather, even if overall storm numbers were not elevated.

Operational and incident-specific factors

In addition to weather, several operational factors contributed to losses, including:

• Fire-related incidents
• Cargo shift and stack collapse in rough seas
• Individual vessel incidents, including groundings and total losses

As in previous years, container losses typically result from a combination of factors, with challenging weather conditions often acting as the trigger.

Credit: WSC
Container loss trend

The number of containers lost at sea continues to fluctuate year-to-year, reflecting the impact of isolated large-scale incidents.

The increase in 2025 reverses the sharp decline observed in 2022–2024 but remains consistent with historical variability driven by major incidents.

The full dataset since WSC started its surveys show:

The highest recorded loss remains 2013, with 5,578 containers
The lowest recorded loss was in 2023, with 221 containers

Every container loss incident presents a risk to the environment, seafarers, shippers’ cargo and to the ship, and we will continue to work systematically to prevent them.

Nevertheless, despite periodic spikes, the overall trend continues to demonstrate that container losses are rare relative to the scale of global trade.

Recovery trends

For the third consecutive year, we are also gathering data on the recovery of containers.

In 2025, 128 containers were recovered, compared to minimal recoveries in previous years.

This increase suggests improved tracking and response capabilities, as well as enhanced coordination and collaboration between ocean carriers and coastal authorities.

Regulatory shift

To remind, the Maritime Safety Committee, at its 108th session, adopted amendments to SOLAS Chapter V (Resolution MSC.550(108)), introducing a requirement to report freight containers lost at sea or observed drifting. 

In parallel, the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), at its 81st session, adopted amendments to Article V of Protocol I of MARPOL (Resolution MEPC.384(81)), establishing reporting procedures for lost containers aligned with SOLAS regulations V/31 and V/32.  

These amendments entered into force on 1 January 2026.

West Antarctica is missing way too much ice

Photograph : Sebnem Coskun/Getty images

From Wired by Graham Readfearn

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Temperatures have climbed up to 45 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, stopping ice from forming in the dead of Antarctic winter.

ANTARCTICA’S WEST COAST is missing an area of winter sea ice the size of France, sparking concerns for threatened penguins other marine life and global sea levels.

The Bellingshausen Sea is off the coast of West Antarctica. (NASA)

 

One expert said the loss of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea was “depressing” and the failure of ice to form could have intensified a heatwave over the continent’s peninsular last week that saw daytime temperatures peak at 15.4 degrees Celsius which is more than 20 degrees Celsius above average.

It’s winter in Antarctica, when sea ice expands rapidly around the continent peaking in September.

But satellite observations showed the Bellingshausen Sea—on the west side of the Antarctic peninsular and which by June would usually be covered by ice—was almost completely ice free.

Scientists said the region was missing about 650,000 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) of sea ice, compared with the average between 1991 and 2020.
That is an area about the size of France and almost tenfold the size of Tasmania.

“I’m concerned. It’s depressing,” said Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

“It is remarkable that we are in June, and there is no sea ice there.”

He said this was the third time in four years that sea ice had been very low in the region.
“I don’t think we will see sea ice there any more.
It’s done,” he said.

He said the loss of sea ice was likely linked to changes in the ocean and scientists were trying to understand if global heating was a factor.

He said the region was important for krill—a critical part of the food web for species in the region.
Krill would usually be hiding from predators under the ice in winter, where they graze on algae.

On June 10 there was about 11.4 m square kilometers of sea ice around the entire continent compared to a long-term average for that date of 12.6 m square km.

Dr. Phil Reid, who monitors Antarctic conditions at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said the Bellingshausen Sea had seen “incredible coastal exposure” in winter and summer in recent years.

He said just to the area’s west were the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers—the continent’s major contributors to ice loss and sea level rise.

Floating ice shelves in front of the glaciers could break up faster if protective sea ice is absent for longer periods, he said, and this could then speed up the loss of ice from the glaciers, pushing up global sea levels in the future.

The Bellingshausen Sea’s coastline was the site of tragedy in late 2022 when thousands of emperor penguin chicks died during a “catastrophic breeding failure” in four colonies.

View image in fullscreen-Satellite observations show a large area of sea ice in west Antarctica over the Bellingshausen Sea has failed to appear this winter. 

Deep red indicates at least a 50% loss in sea ice compared with the 1991 to 2020 average. 

Illustration: Phil Reid/Bureau of Meteorology/National Snow and Ice Data Center

 

That event contributed to UN advisers pushing the species up two categories to “endangered” on its international threatened species list earlier this year.

Dr. Peter Fretwell, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who has been documenting the penguin’s decline, said the current loss of sea ice in the region was “a serious problem for penguins, especially emperors.”
“Sea ice is forming too late and breaking up too early.
It leads to reduced breeding success and longer trips to molting grounds.”

Adelie penguin numbers were also falling and crabeater seals were being forced to migrate in summer to find stable ice, he said.

The extent of ice at Antarctica, as of June 11, 2026. (Supplied: NSIDC)

 

This month the Antarctic peninsular witnessed an extreme temperature spike over several days.
Hobbs said while “nobody has done the numbers” it was reasonable to suggest the heat wave was “made worse by the lack of sea ice.”

Sea ice would usually help to cool any warmer airflow entering the region from the north, he said.

Officials at Argentina’s national weather service, Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, said the country’s Esperanza base at the peninsular’s northeastern tip had experienced an “extreme temperature event” that peaked on June 5 and 6.

Maximum temperatures of 15.4 degrees Celsius and 13.4 degrees Celsius, respectively, were recorded at a period when average daily maximums were minus 6.2 degrees Celsius.
The previous June temperature record at the base of 13.3 degrees Celsius was set on June 12, 1998.

 

Links :

• The Guardian : Antarctica’s west coast missing an area of sea ice the size of France as temperatures peak 20C above average 
• LiveScience : Antarctica’s sudden sea ice loss is one of the most extreme and confusing events in the modern climate record. Scientists now know why it's happening. 

France & misc. (SHOM) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

 

210 nautical raster charts updated (including 10 new editions & 3 new charts)

see GeoGarage news 

Declassified satellite images (1960-1984)

🎉 To mark the release of over 700 georeferenced declassified spy satellite images, Harry has made his 1960-1984 map collection fully searchable: https://t.co/47v4qrBQ0Z

Explore anywhere in the world and jump straight to the interactive maps to compare them to modern day. pic.twitter.com/4u5YMP4epw

— Soar (@SoarAtlas) February 20, 2026

A new species of tiny octopus was discovered in the Galápagos Islands

Courtesy Charles Darwin Foundation

From Wired by Marta Musso

An octopus about the size of a golf ball was first spotted in 2015 near Darwin Island.
A new study gives it both a formal description and a name.

A TINY BLUE octopus that lives in the deep sea off the coast of the Galápagos Islands is so small that it can fit in the palm of a hand.
And as a team of researchers coordinated by Chicago's Field Museum announced in a new study just published in the journal Zootaxa, it now has an official name—Microeledone galapagensis.

The octopus was first spotted in 2015 during a deep-sea expedition aboard the research vessel E/V Nautilus.
From there, marine biologists used a remotely operated underwater vehicle (RoV) to explore the ocean floor near Darwin Island, at the northern end of the Galápagos archipelago.
As the RoV's camera moved across the seafloor near an underwater slope at a depth of 1,773 meters (5,817 feet), they noticed the tiny octopus with its vibrant blue coloring.

By performing a close inspection, the researchers were able to recover the blue octopus and film two other specimens, and then, at the end of the mission, conduct a thorough analysis.
It left them puzzled, however, as they were not certain which species it belonged to.
So they contacted Field Museum expert Janet Voight, sending her a photo of the animal.
“Right away, I knew it was something really special,” said Voight, lead author of the new study.
“I’d never seen anything like it.” However, to determine whether an animal belongs to a new species requires a complete analysis of all its body parts, and since the blue octopus was the only one of its kind ever collected, the experts did not want to dissect and thus lose such a valuable specimen.

To overcome this problem, the authors used x-ray computed tomography to create and assemble thousands of CT micro-scans, which then allowed them to create a 3D model of the blue octopus, both internally and externally.
The researchers were able to observe the most minute details, from the tentacles (squat, with few suckers) to the smooth skin (almost devoid of pigment on the back) to a specific funnel-shaped organ, thus obtaining the information needed to classify it as a new species and place it among other cephalopods.
"Because CT imaging is nondestructive, it's especially important for type specimens like this one," said coauthor Stephanie Smith.
“And that's great for me, because people are often bringing me these incredibly rare and stunningly beautiful specimens that I get the privilege of virtually opening up.”

In addition to describing the new species, the blue octopus reminds us how much we still don't know about the ocean depths, how crucial these expeditions and research are to better understand these still unexplored ecosystems, and why protecting them is so important.

“These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them.
I just feel lucky that I got to work with them,” said Voight.
“If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean.
The oceans are so big, and there’s so much left to explore.”

This startup raised $43M to build a hive mind for ships

From TechCrunch by Sean O'Kane

Oceans — to state the obvious — are big.
That makes it hard for governments, shipping companies, and insurance providers to know exactly what’s happening on them at any particular moment.
It doesn’t help that modern-day ships often aren’t equipped with modern technology or the right software behind those sensors to properly analyze what they see.

Quartermaster, an Arlington, Virginia-based startup, is building a solution to this problem that it calls “SmartMast.” It’s quite literally a package of weather-hardened sensors like cameras and radios that go on a ship’s mast and can relay real-time maritime data.
Combined with an analytics platform that can interpret all that information, Quartermaster refers to it as a “continuous, distributed sensing network” — a hive mind for millions of ships.

SmartMast is far more advanced than the current standard known as AIS, or the “automatic identification system,” according to Quartermaster CEO and founder Neil Sobin.
AIS is very basic and more or less consists of relayed location pings.
It’s also vulnerable.
Sobin says Quartermaster’s tech will be less susceptible to fraud, which can be a big problem on the high seas.

“In maritime, AIS is a completely broken system. It’s opt-in, [you] enter your own data, and if you want to do anything nefarious on the ocean, from petty smuggling all the way up to sanctions evasion, you can simply opt out of the system, or spoof it,” he said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.
“You can take advantage of just how fragile it is.”

Sobin has spent recent weeks repeating this pitch to investors, and they rewarded him with a $43 million Series A funding round.
The investment, which Quartermaster announced, was co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital, a VC firm that backs “remarkable founders from day zero.”

First Round partner Bill Trenchard, who led Uber’s seed round in 2010 and is an investor in Flexport, said in a statement that Quartermaster is “reshaping how maritime operators understand and act on the world’s oceans.”

“Most attempts to bring intelligence to the ocean have run into the same wall: The cost of bespoke hardware does not scale to a planet that is mostly water.
Neil and his team have solved that,” he said.

Quartermaster says more than 600 ships using SmartMast have covered 10 million square miles of ocean to date.
The primary goal is to create an infrastructure layer for intelligence applications — identifying other ships, collecting training data for companies working on marine autonomy, aiding scientists and robotics experts, and providing data and insights to governments.

In Sobin’s eyes, there’s almost no limit to how Quartermaster’s system can be used, and the company’s already turning up new applications of the tech.
For instance, the company said SmartMast-equipped ships have already assisted in “over 20 rescues of mariners at sea.” That’s not a revenue-driving opportunity, but Sobin said Quartermaster is constantly thinking about ways to make life better for mariners, especially because it may win more customers.

“That is work we’re really proud of, but also [those are] the dynamics that help us lock in our network, you know, and create that incentive for mariners to work with us in this way,” he said.
“Our approach is to be pro-mariner and to create incentive for the mariner, and I think very few others will figure out how to operate that model as successfully as we have.
I think there are a bunch of players in the market who try to sell a sensor to a boat, try to sell a sensor to a fleet operator, and I think those are really challenging pitches to make, because fleet operations are low-margin businesses.”

As for the funding, Sobin said he expects a large chunk of it will be put toward hiring engineers to keep pushing Quartermaster’s tech forward.
While that money will help, Sobin also thinks the opportunity will just be too good for some engineers to pass up.

“The ocean has so much low-hanging fruit in computer vision tasks,” he said.
For engineers at social media companies, or AI labs, it’s “hard to feel the reward of all of your effort.
On the ocean, a single engineer can come in and make a significant impact in relatively short periods of time, simply because no one has worked on the space before.”

Deep Sea crisis: a country disappears from the Global Digital Map for 38 days

Every time you visit a web page or send an email, data is being sent and received through an intricate cable system that stretches around the globe.

Since the 1850s, we've been laying cables across oceans to become better connected.

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables constantly transmitting data between nations.

From 36KR

How does the "undersea lifeline" affect the whole world?

The story of Tonga has told the world that the breakage of a single submarine cable can make a country disappear from the digital map.

On January 15, 2022, a loud noise erupted from the seabed in the South Pacific.
An undersea volcano violently erupted, and the shockwaves and tsunamis instantly snapped the only submarine cable connecting Tonga to the outside world.
Nearly 80 kilometers of the cable was broken into several pieces and buried deep under the volcanic ash.
This island nation with a population of about 100,000 instantly "disappeared" from the internet map.

For 38 days, there was a communication blackout.
There were no bank transfers, no international calls, and no internet connection.
A glass fiber with a diameter smaller than an adult's palm determined whether a country was "online or offline."

As the "information arteries" carrying 99% of intercontinental data transmission, although submarine cables are hidden beneath the sea, they are the key communication infrastructure that affects the global digital economy.

There are approximately 500 submarine communication cables globally, with a total length exceeding 1.7 million kilometers, which can circle the Earth's equator more than 40 times.
They are truly the "undersea lifelines." 

However, a ship's anchor dragging across the seabed, a submarine landslide, a regional conflict, or a geopolitical game could all become the "guillotine" to cut off the information flow, and for each country, it could be an unbearable communication disaster.

In the deep - sea battlefield full of intertwined risks, how to protect the undersea lifelines and enhance the resilience of digital infrastructure has become a global proposition that must be jointly answered in this era.

 

The Tonga islands have been cut off from the world since last week's volcanic eruption which damaged a major undersea communications cable that could take weeks to repair.

 
Frequent "Injuries"

The vast ocean creates an illusion of protection for submarine cables.
However, beneath the calm sea surface, cable damage occurs almost every day.
According to data from the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the number of global submarine communication cable failures ranges from 150 to 200 per year, with an average of about 3 cables needing repair each week.

"Human - induced cable failures account for 70% to 80% of the total.
Fishing trawling and merchant ship anchoring are the main sources of damage." Chen Liang, the deputy general manager and senior engineer of China Submarine Cable Construction Co., Ltd.
(hereinafter referred to as "Cable Company"), told a reporter from IT Times.

There is an under - construction international submarine cable off the coast of Shanghai Lingang.
Due to its long project cycle, it has not been connected to the main system and is not marked on the electronic nautical chart.
When the Sino - British Submarine Cable Company recently participated in the repair, they found that the cable was severely damaged by the anchor of a ten - thousand - ton ship, with multiple fiber optic breaks, making the repair extremely difficult.

A shocking "anchor strike" incident in Europe brought the vulnerability of submarine cables to the public eye.

On Christmas Day in 2024, the Estlink 2 power line and four key communication cables between Finland and Estonia were cut by the dragging anchor of an oil tanker.
The 11 - ton anchor dragged nearly 90 kilometers along the seabed, causing losses of over 70 million euros and interrupting regional power and the internet for several days.

To address this persistent problem, the Cable Company's operation and maintenance team's main daily task is "preventive patrols." Chen Liang introduced that the team uses a remote monitoring system to check in real - time whether there are ships operating in the cable protection area.
Once an abnormality is detected, they immediately dispatch patrol boats along the route to persuade the ships to leave and cooperate with law - enforcement forces such as the coast guard, maritime authorities, and fishery administration for control, forming a complete protection process from monitoring and early warning to on - site disposal.

However, facing the complex global sea conditions, local protection cannot achieve full coverage.
In addition, due to long - term seawater corrosion, ocean current scouring, and the influence of marine organisms, the natural aging risk of submarine cables continues to accumulate, and sudden failures cannot be completely eliminated, posing a hidden danger for large - scale network outages.

This vulnerability is essentially an inevitable result of the over - concentration of internet infrastructure.

Sangita Abdul Chaudhry, a scholar from the University of California, Irvine, told a reporter from IT Times that "Global data centers and submarine cables are highly concentrated in Europe and the United States, and network services are controlled by a few giants.
A single - point failure can easily trigger a chain - reaction paralysis."

Image source: unsplash

Searching for Cables in the Deep Sea

If ship anchoring is a preventable "hidden injury," then the damage caused by extreme natural disasters and deep - water geological disasters is an unpredictable "fatal blow."

CBS News detailed the difficulties in the repair after the Tonga volcanic eruption in a 2022 report: The cable was buried under 30 centimeters of silt and displaced 5 kilometers.
It took the repair ship 20 days to replace a 91 - kilometer - long damaged cable.
Due to the shortage of spare cables, full repair may take 6 to 9 months.

Tongatapu Island, the main island of Tonga, photographed on January 17, 2022. 

Image source: New Zealand Ministry of Defense

On the western coast of the Pacific Ocean, the difficulty of deep - water repair is also astonishing.
In 2016, a submarine landslide occurred in the eastern waters of Taiwan, China.
Submarine cables at a depth of 2000 to 4000 meters were snapped horizontally.
Zhang Zhe, the general manager of the operation department of the Cable Company, recalled that the standard process for cable repair is to salvage the cable, cut off the faulty section, splice the spare cable, and rebury it.
However, the most difficult part is not the splicing but "finding it."

"In long - distance offshore areas, the positioning error of shore - based testing can range from several kilometers to more than ten kilometers," Zhang Zhe explained.
With a depth of thousands of meters and the surging sediment turbidity current, it is almost impossible for the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to locate the cable.
Operators can only rely on the lifting cable of the surface ship for "blind fishing," and it took more than half a month just to salvage the cable.

This difficulty of "finding the broken cable" in the dark deep sea is not an isolated case.

The repair personnel of the Sino - British Submarine Cable Company also experienced a repair operation after a major earthquake in the Philippine Sea.
The water depth in the affected area was two to three thousand meters.
The strong earthquake triggered a large - scale submarine landslide, and a large amount of earth and rock buried the cable.
The detection equipment could not capture the cable's position at all, and the repair work was once in a desperate situation like "looking for a needle in a haystack." They could only try to recover the cable one kilometer at a time along the pre - determined route.
It took a month to salvage both ends of the broken cable ashore.

"The salvaged cable was completely unrecognizable.
The originally corrosion - resistant outer sheath was eroded by the heavy pressure and turned completely gray - black, indicating that it had been buried and squeezed on the seabed for a long time and under great stress," Zhang Lei, a training instructor of the Sino - British Submarine Cable Company, told a reporter from IT Times.
In the face of extreme natural conditions, one can only proceed steadily and step by step, using the most clumsy but reliable method to regain the deep - sea communication lifeline bit by bit.

Typhoons, huge waves, ocean currents, etc.
may interrupt the operation at any time; it is necessary to coordinate the closure of the shipping lane in densely trafficked areas; after the fishing ban ends, fishing boats go out to sea in large numbers, and the repair window closes...
When a fault occurs at a global data bottleneck, the consequences are even more disastrous.

In 2024, a local conflict occurred in the Red Sea region, damaging four cables.
25% of the telecommunications traffic in West Asia and North Africa was interrupted, and 25% of the data traffic between Asia and Europe was affected.
Due to the conflict area, the repair work was almost impossible to carry out.

"Aging" Crisis

"The most difficult part of submarine cable repair is not the splicing technology, but waiting for ships and waiting for certificates," said Yan Xiang, the president of Zhongshi Technology.
There are only about 60 professional ships globally with the ability to repair in deep - sea areas over 3000 meters, and they are mainly concentrated in developed regions.
Regions such as Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East have almost no independent repair capabilities.
After a fault occurs, they can only "wait in line for repair," and the waiting period can even be as long as several months.

This is also the shortcoming of internet resilience that Chaudhry is worried about: There is no globally balanced protection and repair system.
Once there are concentrated failures in key areas, it will be in a helpless situation.

The maintenance area in Yokohama, Japan, managed by the Sino - British Submarine Cable Company is the area with the densest international submarine cables in China.
Ships from China, Japan, and South Korea take turns on standby, but there are still tense situations where "the cable breaks again right after it is repaired." The high - density fishing operations in international waters keep the repair pressure saturated.

What is even more troublesome is cross - border approval.
"Technology can be standardized, but administrative barriers cannot," Yan Xiang revealed.
In 2024, there was a submarine cable repair that was delayed by layers of approval, taking a total of 947 days, far exceeding the time required for the actual repair of the fault.

The shortage of spare parts also restricts the repair efficiency.
Some of the materials required for submarine cable repair, such as spare cables and splicing boxes, rely on overseas production.
The procurement and transportation cycle can be as long as several months, and sometimes the repair window may be missed.
"Once there are consecutive failures, the spare consumables will be quickly exhausted, and we can only wait," a repairman told a reporter from IT Times.

After a submarine cable breaks, it is a competition of the speed and scheduling of repair resources.
However, the global submarine cable repair ships are quietly entering an "aging crisis." The overall ship age is relatively high, and the construction cycle of new ships is several years.

Image source: Shanghai Telecom

The report "The Future of Submarine Cable Maintenance" jointly released by TeleGeography and Infra - Analytics in 2025 shows that by 2040, the total kilometers of cables deployed in the global ocean will increase by 48% net.
By then, about two - thirds of the global cable maintenance ships will reach the end of their service life.
The remaining half of the fleet will also be close to the 40 - year retirement age.

For the Chinese fleet, "strengthening combat capabilities" is on the agenda.
The "Tianyi Navigator," which was launched on New Year's Day this year and is planned to be officially put into operation in June, is the first large - scale submarine cable engineering ship in China with the ability to construct and repair at a water depth of 5000 meters.
This 18,000 - ton submarine cable ship with unlimited navigation area realizes localization, digitalization, and intelligence, and is equipped with a full - set electric propulsion system and a DP - 2 dynamic positioning system.
"It directly improves the delivery and repair efficiency of the entire submarine cable system,"Chen Liang said.
However, he also admitted that compared with developed countries, Chinese submarine cable enterprises still have a gap in the number of ships and technical accumulation in terms of overall construction capabilities.
Deep - Sea "Offensive and Defensive Battle"

Physical damage tests the hardware resilience of submarine cables, while geopolitical games target the "sovereign resilience" of the global digital network.
Submarine cables have been included in the scope of geopolitical competition.

In August 2025, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed new regulations, prohibiting the use of equipment and services provided by "foreign adversaries" in submarine cable systems and encouraging the preferential use of trusted technologies from the United States and its allies.
This is the first major and comprehensive revision of submarine cable - related rules since 2001.

In fact, restrictive arrangements for submarine cables have been in place for a long time.
In August 2020, the United States launched the "Clean Network" initiative, listing submarine cables as one of the six key areas to be suppressed.
Since 2021, the United States has repeatedly abused state power, without proper justification, and based solely on subjective speculation and suspicion, taken unreasonable measures to suppress China Telecom, such as revoking the 214 license.
In 2022, Huawei Marine Networks was included in the Entity List.
In 2024, the United States joined with multiple countries to sign the "New York Joint Declaration," requiring the selection of allied contractors for submarine cable components and services.

Image source: Shanghai Telecom

This geopolitical "exclusion of China" is most directly reflected in the submarine cable route planning.
Gao Xin (a pseudonym), an insider in the submarine cable industry, told a reporter from IT Times that in the past, the shortest route was preferred for submarine cable laying.
However, affected by geopolitics, foreign submarine cable route planning now deliberately avoids Chinese waters.
For example, the Intra - Asia Marine Cable project from Japan to Singapore deliberately chooses to go south around the eastern part of Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and Borneo, bypassing the "nine - dash line" area in the South China Sea.

"As long as a Chinese telecom operator participates in the investment, or even if the cable only lands in the Chinese mainland or Hong Kong, China, these submarine cable projects face the risk of partners withdrawing due to US regulations," Gao Xin said.
European and American internet giants also tend to "bypass China" when building new systems.
Huawei Marine Networks, which was once powerful, now "doesn't even have the opportunity to bid."

In the view of an analyst, the core purpose of exclusive construction is to build a data corridor for a "values alliance." By controlling the submarine cable routes, landing points, and supply chains, an "independent cable belt" that does not pass through specific regions is created.
This is not only a business competition but also a division of "spheres of influence" in the digital age, ensuring that every node through which data flows is under "trusted" sovereign control.

"In essence, it is to instrumentalize civilian infrastructure to serve the great - power competition," the analyst told a reporter from IT Times.

However, China is not completely passive.
In November 2025, the Southeast Asia - Hainan - Hong Kong (SEA - H2X) international submarine cable project landed in Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong.
This approximately 6000 - kilometer - long cable, equipped with 8 pairs of main optical fibers, connects Hainan, China, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore, breaking the restrictions of geopolitical blockade on China's participation in international submarine cable construction.
Resilience "Firewall"

Facing natural risks, repair shortcomings

 

Links :

• PCMag : The Day the Internet Died: How an Underwater Cable Cut Plunged a Nation Into Digital Darkness 
• Reuters : Undersea cable fault could cut off Tonga from rest of the world for weeks 
• The Guardian : Parts of Tonga without internet after cables damaged and Starlink ordered to cease operations / What lies beneath: the growing threat to the hidden network of cables that power the internet 
• NPR : An undersea cable fault could cut Tonga from the rest of the world for weeks
• BBC : How will Tonga's broken internet cable be mended?  / Tonga volcano: Internet restored five weeks after eruption 

El Niño is here to turn the world’s weather upside down

photo : NOAA satellites

From Wired by Brian Kahn

 

El Niño Is Here to Turn the World’s Weather Upside Down
From a wet winter in the Southwest to fewer Atlantic hurricanes, this is what to expect as a potential super El Niño takes shape. 

THE WAIT IS finally over: El Niño has officially begun.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that the semiannual climate phenomenon has arrived.
Congratulations if you took the pre-July 1 prediction on Kalshi.

Prediction markets aren’t the only places with a lot riding on El Niño.
The phenomenon—characterized by hotter-than-normal waters in the eastern tropical Pacific—has a huge impact on weather in nearly every corner of the globe.
And with this year’s iteration projected to be among the strongest ever recorded, the impacts are likely to be particularly acute.

There are a handful of ways to measure El Niño, but NOAA’s threshold hinges on temperatures being 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 C) above average for a three-month period in a specific part of the Pacific.
(That area is dubbed NINO3.4 if you want to impress and/or bore someone at a party.) The Pacific surpassed that threshold thanks to a rapid upswing in temperatures in record weeks.
But there are other signs of El Niño, including a surge in sea levels of up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) in the eastern tropical Pacific, thanks to winds blowing from the west that cause water to pile up there.

The shift in ocean temperatures in turn influences the atmosphere regionally, which then has knock-on effects on weather around the globe, from increasing the odds of wet weather in the southwestern US to lowering the odds of an active Atlantic hurricane season.
Drought also becomes more likely in places like Indonesia and the Sahel region of Africa.
El Niño also releases extra heat into the atmosphere, warming the already-heating planet even further.
In essence, El Niño is like the engine of a car: Fire it up and the atmosphere gets moving.

NASA’s Sentinel-6 satellite has detected higher sea surface height across parts of the Pacific Ocean, a sign that heat may be building beneath the surface as El Niño 2026 strengthens.

NOAA has confirmed El Niño conditions are underway, but scientists are still watching to see how powerful this event becomes.

 
The key questions now are how strong this year’s edition of El Niño will be and how that will affect its impacts.
The answers appear to be “very” and “quite a bit.” NOAA gives this year’s El Niño a 63 percent chance of exceeding the 3.6-degree F threshold, which would qualify it as a super El Niño.
But climate models are bullish that it could surpass that threshold by a wide margin.
Some have it surpassing 5.4 F, which would make this the strongest El Niño on record.

There have been four other El Niños that have reached the super threshold, and all led to widespread problems around the globe.
To revisit the car analogy, if your average El Niño is like the engine in a Toyota Prius, a super El Niño is more akin to the one in a Ferrari Luce.

The 1982-83 event—the first one in recorded history—caused Lake Mead to overflow, while the 1997-98 version caused what was Indonesia’s worst drought on record.
The most recent iteration in 2023-24 caused Southern Africa's worst drought in 100 years, leading to 61 million people requiring food assistance.
All the heat in the ocean also fries coral reefs, which are already struggling to adapt to the rising temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels.

A new phase of the natural El Niño weather pattern is "on our doorstep", according to UN scientists, boosting temperatures on a planet already under strain from climate change.

The World Meteorological Organization said El Niño is “very likely” to officially begin within the next few months, driving more extreme weather around much of the globe.

Several forecasts from national weather agencies suggest this El Niño could end up as one of the strongest ever recorded, nicknamed by some as a possible “super” or even “Godzilla” event.

 
And really, that’s the other issue at play with what will happen with this year’s El Niño.
The world has never been hotter in human history.
Pile an El Niño on and it’s likely there will be a burst of warming in the pipeline for this year and next.
If I was a betting person, I would definitely take the over on 2026 being among the hottest years on record.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Strongest El Niño in a century? What this rare phenomenon ...