Episode 18 - Seabed 2030 at SubOptic, a subsea cable industry event

For Podcast 18, August 2025, Seabed 2030 Head of Partnerships Steve Hall brings an update from our recent attendance at SubOptic 2025, a conference and trade show of the global subsea cables industry. We were invited by Alcatel Submarine Networks, one of the big three subsea cables companies, owned by the French state and Nokia. Alcatel are enthusiastic contributers to the work of the UN Ocean Decade Corporate Data Group. 

The public don't always realise that the vast majority of international internet traffic is carried on thousands of kilometres of fibre optic cable laid across the ocean floor, not bounced off satellites. As such, the industry is one of the few that conducts bathymetric measurements at global scale - albeit along narrow tracks - and so is an essential source of new, and legacy, data for Seabed 2030 & GEBCO. Indeed from the earliest days of GEBCO, bathymetry supplied by cable layers has formed an important source of data. 

In this episode we also introduce our Head of External Relations, Pegah Souri - she has been associated with the project for six years and is a key person for ensuring that the outside world knows about our work. 

In the second part of the podcast, Steve runs through the topics covered in his presentation to industry at SubOptic, and finishes with a preview of the imminent publication of the Seabed Mapping Special Edition of the Marine Technology Society and Society for Underwater Technology journal, Volume 59 Number 2.

Find out more about Seabed 2030 at www.seabed2030.org, contact the editor the podcast Steve Hall here, or Pegah Souri here. 

Thank you for listening! 

Revealing Hidden Depths - the Seabed 2030 Podcast
Find out more about our project at www.seabed2030.org
Brought to you by the Nippon Foundation and GEBCO

Chapters

• 0:00 Start & Introduction to Episode 18
• 1:18 Introducing Pegah Souri, our Head of External Relations
• 3:40 SubOptic 2025 - what is was about, topics covered
• 6:52 Protecting subsea infrastructure
• 8:05 SubOptic Continued
• 10:13 Seabed 2030 at SubOptic
• 10:59 More about Alcatel Submarine Networks
• 12:00 Seabed 2030 Presentation run-through
• 33:51 Subsea mapping on other worlds?
• 35:32 Introducing Volume 59 #2 of MTS/SUT Journal on subsea mapping
• 36:28 End Credits by Steve Hall & Pegah Souri, Music by Emily Boddy