European rescue boats rushed to the sea on Friday, with the express “find and fix” command firmly issued by telecommunications companies in both the Middle East and Europe. It's believed that the underwater lines were severed by an inattentive captain, who lowered the anchor of his ship in a place where such action is expressly forbidden, due to the hazard of entanglement on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. The split occurred somewhere between Sicily and Tunis, but the engineer ships still have a tough time tracking down the ends of each cable.

If an anchor indeed ripped the two cable apart, then it's possible that the severed ends of the lines are miles apart from each other. That's why engineers already started scanning the bottom of the ocean with an automated submersible, dubbed Hector. The little submarine, controlled from a ship above, will scout the deep sea, in search for the ends of each line. Finding them fast could potentially save millions of dollars.

Once the ends are located, they will be brought to the surface, and stitched back together. However, this is a very difficult process, as a France Telecom Marine spokesman, Louis-Michel Aymard, admitted on Sunday. "We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it's a very huge cable." The cables were allowed some leeway, instead of being firmly attached to the ocean floor, to compensate for drifting current or anchor hits. But accidents where the anchors sever the cables are not uncommon.

Egypt already managed to divert a substantial part of its Internet and telephone traffic through auxiliary lines, and is therefore safeguarded against any negative effects that the rupture may have. However, other Middle Eastern nations are not that fortunate and depend substantially on the two cables. If the teams of engineers fail to reconnect them soon, then this seemingly harmless incident could translate into an increase in the economic difficulties prompted by the international financial crisis.