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Sharks have shown an inexplicable taste for the new fiber-optic cables that are being strung along the ocean floor linking the United States, Europe and Japan, telephone company officials say.
In the Atlantic alone, shark bites have caused the failure of four segments of cable, which is the main artery for global voice and computer communications. And British telephone officials monitoring the installation of the fiber-optic network that will link the United States to Japan and Guam are also reporting troubles with gnawing sharks.
The attacks have caused some delays in laying cable, and a single bite on a deep-sea line, which is about the size of a garden hose, can cost $250,000 or more to fix. There is a benefit, however. In studying ways to limit damage from the attacks, the telephone companies are providing marine scientists with valuable new data on sharks and specimens of previously unknown species.
The first evidence of sharks' attraction to the cables was the discovery of shark teeth embedded in an experimental line off the Canary Islands in 1985. A shark usually loses teeth when it bites something, and it later grows new ones.
''We were surprised,'' said James M. Barrett, deputy director of international engineering for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. ''We had laid 55,000 or 60,000 miles of undersea cable all over the world with no problem. There had not been a single case of a shark biting one of the old cables,'' which were made of copper.
He added, ''We took the teeth to a shark dentist and asked him to identify them.'' Even now, he said, experts disagree on which type of shark was responsible for the attack.
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