Like shipping channels in the ocean. You can't see them until a boat cuts through the water leaving a wake. There's no evidence left behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ&t=18s (gibberish warning)
There's no current down in these caves. The logical solution then is to drop a trail of breadcrumb beacons to relay your signal along, either via light or some radio band that penetrates water halfway decently.
The sea is big and has many innocuous boats, anything happening under water is effectively invisible.
And you're assuming they actually went all the way down; someone else mentioned an ROV, but if you know where the pipeline is you can probably sink explosives on a weight too. It doesn't have to be accurate, not when the pipe will collapse and be contaminated with little encouragement.
That’s conspiracy thinking. The absence of your question being addressed doesn’t mean it’s plausible. The ocean is generally a noisy place, and the activities of a small submerged vehicle likely won’t raise notice without active listening.
The lack of detail is disappointing, but not entirely surprising given the historical context. The SOFAR channel in the ocean transmits low frequency sound waves for thousands of miles. Its existence and applications were kept classified until the 90s.
Fascinating stuff, the really interesting stuff comes when you can zoom right in and see what the cables go past.
For example, the cable in the Indian Ocean that goes very close to Diego Garcia, which has a US military base on it. Supposedly the cable doesn't have a landing there, but there is some evidence which suggests the cable might actually go through the island.
This was supposedly a problem with a stealth ship designed by Lockheed’s “skunkworks”: against the choppy noise of waves and swell, a blank spot (of no radar return) stood out dramatically.
Could they be traces left by equipment performing some sort of surveying procedure for the sake of laying submarine communications cable? I know there's a cable somewhere at about 1.5 kilometers below sea level, but I don't know if there's a maximum feasible depth.
I recall reading something (I honestly don't recall where, so it's possible it was fiction) that discussed how Ohio class SSBNs are so quiet that theoretically, at least, they can be tracked by following the void that they leave in the natural background noise. Of course, the problem is that even if you can track it, you have to find it first. It's a big ocean.
Submarine cables are a mystery to a lot of people. I had to show my dad a complete map of the cables once to convince him they exist. He just couldn’t fathom we’re actually able to run thousands of km of cables at the bottom of the ocean.
They're in a place where there is no lights and no sound. You have to emit something whether that be in the form of sound or in the electromagnetic spectrum in order to receive a reflection back and emissions remove stealth.
Not to mention that sonar is highly disruptive to many forms of sea life as it's incredibly loud.
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