Suspected sabotage of SHEFA-2 submarine cable in North Sea

In the early hours of Thursday 20 October 2022, the SHEFA-2 submarine fibre-optic cable system was damaged, leaving the Shetland Islands largely cut off from the outside world. Phone, broadband and mobile services failed for much of the population of roughly 23,000, and Police Scotland declared a major incident, urging residents to keep lines free for emergencies and to check on vulnerable neighbours. The disruption came days after a separate fault on the SHEFA-2 section between Shetland and the Faroe Islands, so both routes were affected almost simultaneously, an unusual coincidence noted by the operator.

SHEFA-2, owned by Faroese Telecom, links the Faroe Islands to mainland Scotland (Banff) via Shetland and Orkney. Faroese Telecom said it had reason to believe the cable was damaged by a fishing vessel, with the assessment based partly on AIS tracking of vessels in the area; the fault lay only a few kilometres off Shetland. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency indicated a UK-registered fishing vessel was involved. Engineers restored most services via a temporary reroute by 21 October, and the cable ship Cable Vigilance carried out permanent repairs off Shetland later that month.

Accidental damage is the leading explanation. The cable operator, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and, later, the Scottish Government attributed the outage to a fishing trawler snagging the cable on the seabed rather than to sabotage. The damage pattern was described as consistent with heavy fishing gear striking the cable, and SHEFA-2 had been damaged by suspected fishing vessels before. A compensation agreement was subsequently reached with the insurers of a Scottish fishing vessel. The timing, weeks after the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, prompted initial speculation about deliberate interference, but no evidence of sabotage was established.