 After AT&T installed the first deep sea fiberoptic cable between Gran Canaria and Tenerife in the Canary Islands in September 1985, the system suffered a series of shorts that necessitated costly repairs.It was discovered that attacks from the crocodile shark were responsible for most of the failures, possibly because they were attracted to the electric field around the cables.Since crocodile sharks are not benthic in nature, they were presumably biting the cables as they were being deployed.