CABLE SHIP'S TASK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22834, 19 March 1936, Page 14

CABLE SHIP'S TASK

FINDING FAULT IN TASMAN LINK THIRD ATTEMPT TO BE MADE (Fkom Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, March 12. The third attempt in five months to find a cable that has been buried on the bed of the Tasman Sea for 45 years is to be made by the cable steamer Recorder. The Recorder arrived at Sydney this week from Fremantle, and will leave on its search in a few days. The cable is a spare laid in 1890, but some time ago developed a fault which tests between Australia and Nejv Zealand indicated was 200 miles east of Sydney. Three miles below the surface the cable rests in ooze composed of the decomposed bodies of deep sea fish. Usually the navigators can drop right on the cable, but this one puzzles the experts. Repeated dragging with 3$ miles of wire cable, weighing 5i tons, with the grapnel, failed to locate it on two previous expeditions, though the chart of its position when laid was followed. Forty square miles of ocean were searched. One theory is that perhaps some slight error was made in charting the position after the laying, and that the Recorder has been searching miles off the actual position. It is estimated that the pressure of water at the spot i 6 about 82501 b to the square inch. Some of the Recorder's officers think that the cable must have been buried by a submarine earthquake, probably that which caused extensive damage in New Zealand in 1931. They are determined to find it, and will lose no time in getting the Recorder to sea again to use a type of grapnel that digs in the sea bed.