Note the links between Florida and the Yucatan peninsula. There are also some "hops" along the west cost of the US and many in South America.
Undersea cables make a lot of sense when you need to cover a lot of ground without a lot of interconnects in-between. For example, in the NE United States, the nodes are too close together for an undersea cable to make sense. There are many points of connection very close together, with well established infrastructure that can house the cabling on land. On the West Coast, you have long distances in-between without much infrastructure. For example, between LA and San Fran, you've also got Big Sur. There's nothing requiring a fat pipe in that distance, so running a cable out to sea means not negotiating perpetual land-use rights all the way up the coast.
Also, I speculate that undersea cable is more resilient to seasonal freezing and thawing.