Monitoring System for a New Ocean Cable Plow

On the continental shelves, it is desirable to bury ocean cables under the sea bottom from the point of view of coexisting with fishing activities. A new type of cable plow with seven blades developed by KDD is designed to have a capability of burying the cable to a depth of 70 cm under the sea bottom at a towing speed up to about 3 knots. Since the plow is equipped with no power mechanism and is relatively small in size and light in weight, the effective burying works are achieved by adequate operation of the cable ship. This paper describes the cable plow monitoring system for obtaining enough information for the operation of the cable ship. A new ocean telephone cable system was constructed between Japan and China in 1976. KDD succeeded in burying the cable about 700 km across the continental shelf.