For people interested in this, I can recommend Neal Stephensons Wired feature from the 90's. As you'd expect from Stephenson, it's crazy long. It describes his travels documenting the laying of an early submarine Internet cable.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Also, this is quite informative: https://www.quora.com/How-are-major-undersea-cables-laid-in-...

like that map.. it's been on hn a few times. have it bookmarked.

This article has a similar map (same data source) with a slider by year: https://builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-deep/ (The article is also interesting)

Similarly, here is a nice map with fiber trunk over land in some areas: http://maps.level3.com/default/#.VefukZ1Viko

The most connected spot in the world isn't New York or Hong Kong, but the unlikely city of Fortaleza, Brazil, with 17 cable landings.

This is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894.

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749, a few years earlier.

It's really weird thinking about, that every time I swipe around that map on my phone, what I see is sent over some of those exact cables from the other side of the world.

When crossing the Atlantic and other big oceans, do the cables actually rest on the ocean floor or do they float?

They're laid at the bottom of the ocean.

Then how would sharks bite them?

Would be neat to add know and suspected Five Eyes interception points.

They're the white dots ;)