AT&T Finds 'There's Sharks in These Waters'
by Fiber Optics News
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FIBER OPTICS NEWS
Monday June 30, 1986
AT&T FINDS 'THERE'S SHARKS IN THESE WATERS'
While a number of companies have plans to use undersea optical fiber cables, AT&T is finding there are problems that previously had not been imagined. AT&T officials have found that sharks have attacked their TAT-8 fiber optic test bed cable system in the Grand Canary Islands 3 times.
The first problem came only 3 weeks after the prototype system was cut over last fall and knocked the system out for approximately one week. When the cable was examined, "we thought it had scraped along the bottom," remembers Carl Jeffcoat, AT&T Communications district manager for international engineering.
When Bell Labs took X-rays, however, it found that small shark's teeth had become embedded in the cable. "When they told us what the problem was, you could have knocked each one of us over with a feather," Jeffcoat relates.
The other 2 shark-biting attacks took place in February and last month.
The damage was done approximately three-fourths of a mile below the surface, where visibility is almost nil. Jeffcoat theorizes the sharks must have been attracted to the electric field generated by the cable. Bell Labs is now talking to biologists to try to ascertain why the bottom feeders went after the cable and to what distances they will go to get at the cable.
"We are not talking about 'Jaws,' here," Jeffcoat says. "These sharks are from 1-3 feet in length."The reason the sharks were attracted to optical fiber cable--and have not been enticed by the more conventional coaxial cable--is because no outer shielding was applied to surround the electrical field, a condition that is now being corrected. Bell Labs is examining ways to shield the outer part of the optical fiber cable, with economics a factor. The Labs obviously does not want to use expensive armored cable throughout its extensive underwater routes, if it does not have to.
"This is not an AT&T problem, it is an international problem," explained Jeffcoat, alluding to the various companies interested in using undersea fiber optic cables.
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