Researchers from Trinity College Dublin are developing a project which may be able to use undersea telecommunications cables for maritime surveillance.
The researchers hope this will improve Ireland’s ability to detect and classify “dark vessels” – those operating without active transponders – within our coastal waters.
The scientists are using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and State of Polarisation (SoP) technologies for what they call the Sea-Scan project.
The technologies repurpose existing fibre optic infrastructure to double up as a vast network of underwater sensors.
The system is said to be capable of detecting potential threats to the cables themselves, such as from boats anchoring nearby, or trawling, or from “other seabed disturbances arising from accidental or deliberate interference with critical communications infrastructure”.
Advanced AI algorithms are applied to the data collected, enabling the system to detect vessels and assess threats, reducing false alarms.
The Sea-Scan project, which is co-led by Marco Ruffini, professor in Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics and Dr John Kennedy, associate professor in Trinity’s School of Engineering, is one of five teams to have successfully progressed to the “seed phase” of the Research Ireland–Defence Innovation Challenge.
This national initiative is aimed at developing solutions to enhance the capabilities of the Defence Forces and deliver benefits to wider society.
The remaining five teams will use the funding to further develop and validate their concepts, with one ultimately winning the final funding prize of €1 million to take their project to completion.
“Sea-Scan will unlock a new layer of maritime awareness using infrastructure that already exists beneath our oceans, “Prof Marco Ruffini said.
“In a world where national security and digital resilience increasingly intersect, this project represents a scalable and cost-effective leap forward,”he said.
“Over the coming months, we aim to demonstrate that fibre networks can deliver real-time insights into marine activity and help safeguard essential infrastructure.”
Dr John Kennedy said that “every vessel leaves a distinct acoustic fingerprint that can travel hundreds of miles, weaving anthropogenic noise into the ocean’s natural soundscape”.
“By harnessing advanced detection algorithms, we can unlock the potential for existing fibre optic infrastructure to be used as a network of acoustic sensors for the detection of dark vessels,” he said.
