Undersea cables can do double duty

Global telecommunication networks depend on undersea cables that span more than half a million miles across the ocean floor. All of those cables will be replaced over the next 25 years or so, so the time is ripe to equip new lines with instruments to detect earthquakes and tsunami.

It won’t be cheap — adding an estimated 5 to 10 percent to the cost of any undersea cable project — but the price for missing this opportunity could be far higher. University of Hawaii scientists led by Rhett Butler, director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, are backed by the United Nations in their call for all future seafloor cables to have the sensors. Monitoring this unseen world is worth the investment.

A dispiriting turnout on every island

There will undoubtedly be doctoral theses written on why voter apathy has become such a deep, abiding problem in the Aloha State, but for now the reasons for it are anyone’s uneducated guess. The statewide figure of 52.3 percent voter turnout for Tuesday’s general election, an all-time low, is pretty dispiriting.

Maui County fared only slightly better than the statewide average, with 52.7 percent, regardless of its high-profile initiative on GMO crops.

Oahu did better by only the tiniest sliver, at 52.8 percent, while Kauai turnout topped the state record, at 57.4 percent. This leaves Hawaii island at the bottom of the barrel, at 47.7 percent.