SEA PLOW IV - An Underseas Vehicle for Burying Ocean Cable

Ocean-cable burial systems (sea plows) developed by Bell Laboratories have been used with considerable success during the past eight years to provide cable protection from trawler damage over the 100-odd miles of continental shelf on both sides of the Atlantic. These systems, however, were not designed to achieve positive burial of repeaters (amplifiers) and their adjacent cable, or to operate beyond 300 fathoms. A newly developed SG cable system, schedule for TAT-6, will have 1 1/2 times the channel capacity of all present transatlantic cables combined, meaning significantly higher cost of providing interim service in the event of a trawler break. To provide the cable protection required for TAT-6 both in terms of burial performance and operating-depth capability, SEA PLOW IV was designed and tested over a 18-month period beginning in January, 1974 and was successfully used to bury both shore ends of TAT-6 during August and October, 1975.