This globe was created by Tyler Morgan-Wall using GeoJSON, an open source format for visualizing geographic features, using data from the Submarine Cable Map.
A little more helpful context, courtesy of Vice:
According to TeleGeography, there are 426 active submarine cables in the world. The cables are mostly the diameter of a garden hose and filled with filaments the width of a human hair.
The cables lie on the ocean floor and are believed to span more than 807,000 miles. Some are very short, linking islands across a few miles like the one that runs between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Others, like one of the cables connecting Asia to the United States, are more than 10,000 miles long.
Some people believe that sharks are eating the underwater Internet, though that's probably less of an issue than all the man-made problems we bring upon ourselves. Beavers are definitely chowing down on submerged fiber optic though.
