Subsea Cables "Torn Apart" by External Force, says Elisa

A pair of telecomm cables appeared to have been torn apart by a strong external force, Finland's Elisa said today, adding that they had now been repaired.  The cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea on Dec. 25, 2024.

Finnish police seized the Eagle S tanker carrying Russian oil on Dec. 26 and said they suspected that the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables on Christmas Day by dragging its anchor across the seabed.

"The current suspicion is that the external force has been caused by an anchor," Jaakko Wallenius, Chief Security Officer at Elisa, which owns two of the four fiber optic lines, said on Monday. The cables, running between Finland and Estonia, are steel-reinforced with a diameter of just over two centimetres, with several layers of insulation protecting the fibres within.

The Eagle S vessel, which is registered in the Cook Islands, was brought to a bay near Finland's port of Porvoo where police are currently collecting evidence and questioning the crew, eight of whom were named as suspects in the investigation.

Repairing the Estlink 2 power cable that was broken along with the telecoms cables is expected to take some seven months, operators Fingrid of Finland and Elering of Estonia have said.

(Reuters)