Relevant paper talking about fiber earthquake sensing: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6648

Also mini rant:

> ... strips a cable of its protective sheath, exposing a glass core thinner than a hair — a fragile, 4-kilometer-long fiber that’s about to be fused to another. It’s a fiddly task better suited to a lab ...

This sort of pointless made up filler writing always annoys me. Fiber splicing is done by thousands of technicians in the field every day, sure some of it in nicer weather but this is nothing extraordinary.