Transport and Fate of Sediment Suspended from Jetting Operations for Undersea Cable Burial

Cable laying on the ocean bottom, particularly in coastal areas, is increasingly used to avoid the routing problems found on land in densely developed coastal zones. One technique used for sand or relatively soft sediments is the use of a jet plow system. During the jetting process a fraction of the sediment is introduced into the water column which may be transported by currents away from the site before settling back down to the sea floor. A computer simulation model, SSFATE, was developed and used to simulate the resulting sediment water column concentration and resulting deposition from jet plow operations, Applications of the model are presented for cable burial operations in the northeast United States for typically non-cohesive sediments