When Sal Mercogliano was covering the recent uncrewed surface vessel strike of the MV Tutor in the Red Sea he referenced an ArcGIS StoryMap created by Noam Raydan and Farzin Nadimi of the Washington Institute. The StoryMap is very comprehensive and documents the attacks in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, and neighbouring areas dating back to 2019.

The article tells the story of the underground cables that power the internet, as they follow the 50 crew members of KDDI Ocean Link, one of 22 repair and maintenance ships of the 77 cable ships in the world in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

On average, [cable breaks] happen every other day, about 200 times a year. The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks.

An informative @Reuters graphics article on the Houthi rebel attacks at the Bab al-Mandab straight with detailed plots on the attack types, context on the political situation, and how it affects the crew, shipping companies and global shipping.