Submarine cables have been used for over 150 years to open communications between continents, starting with the telegraph. They have been used to transport Internet data across the ocean since 1988, when the first Internet cable (recently removed from the ocean) was installed. These cables can be used for purposes other than their intended purpose, and scientists at the University of Washington are trying to use them to monitor the movements and behavior of whales, in the hope that the data can protect endangered orcas.
In October 2025, UW researchers laid two kilometers of fiber optic cable in the Haro Strait (connecting Washington state to Canada) to show how distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology can be used to track marine mammals that use echolocation to navigate. DAS works by sending laser pulses through the wire that can pick up and measure vibrations, essentially turning the entire cable into a massive sensor.
Although the technology was developed to detect problems in pipelines, scientists can use real-time data collected by DAS systems to precisely measure and locate disturbances such as seismic activity or, in this case, whale movements. The UW team, led by oceanographer Dr. Shima Abadi, will monitor southern resident orcas in the region for two years. As Abadi told the Associated Press, the cables allow researchers to “know where the animals are and know their migration patterns.”
Technology can help nature in unexpected ways
We hope that learning more about the behavior of Southern Resident orcas will help improve conservation efforts for a species that has been listed as endangered for over 20 years. By July 2025, there were only 74 of these whales left due to limited access to food, pollution and (most importantly here) noise. Because whales use echolocation to hunt, ship noise is disorienting and makes it difficult to find the Chinook salmon on which they depend.
Orcas produce higher frequency signals than those tested so far with DAS, which is why the UW study is so important. If it works as planned, it will give thousands of miles of undersea fiber-optic cables a new purpose: tracking the movements of whales. This data could potentially be used to adjust human behavior, such as construction or ferries, based on proximity to orcas.
This isn’t the only case where researchers have helped put technology developed for a specific purpose into another use that helps wildlife and the natural world. In central California, solar farms protect endangered San Joaquin kit foxes by providing them shelter from predators. The fences were even designed to meet the needs of foxes, which is a perfect example of how learning more about animal behavior allows scientists to find creative ways to help them.
