Recommendation 78

There have been several unattributed incidences of damage to subsea infrastructure in the Arctic. In November 2021, the Lofoten-Vesterålen Ocean observatory, an underwater facility in northern Norway, was put out of service after more than 4.3km of its specially designed fibre optic and electric cables were cut. 92 In January 2022, one of two subsea data cables connecting Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and the Norwegian mainland at Harstad was damaged. In both cases, the cause of the damage has not been explained. 93