The paucity of seismic stations in the ocean limits sustained seafloor seismic and pressure observations that are needed for rapid earthquake detection, early warning of damaging ground shaking, and tsunami prediction and verification. Because establishing infrastructure in the oceans is expensive, there is a big advantage to methods that use undersea telecommunication cables. On page 931 of this issue, Zhan et al. (1) describe a new approach to monitor earthquakes, oceanic swell, and potential tsunamis. It relies on observing changes in the polarization of the light that is used to transmit data through the optical fibers in cables on the seafloor. This approach requires no new infrastructure or instrumentation, but instead relies on utilizing observations already made to extract the telecommunications data received at the end of the cable. The finding should spur implementation of an array of cable sensing technologies for geophysical monitoring.

海洋中地震台站的匮乏限制了持续的海底地震和压力观测，这对于快速地震检测，破坏性地面震动的早期预警以及海啸预测和验证是必不可少的。由于在海洋中建立基础设施非常昂贵，因此使用海底电信电缆的方法具有很大的优势。在本期杂志的第931页上，Zhan等人。（1）描述了一种监测地震，海浪和潜在海啸的新方法。它依赖于观察光的偏振变化，该偏振用于通过海底电缆中的光纤传输数据。这种方法不需要新的基础结构或仪器，而是依靠利用已经进行的观察来提取电缆末端接收到的电信数据。该发现应追踪用于地球物理监测的一系列电缆传感技术的实施情况。