Published: May 15, 2008 02:35 pm            

Cable Cuisine

Nutria turn Aquarena cable link into a snack

San Marcos — The fishes swim and strands of cabomba wave in the current at the bottom of Spring Lake. And after almost a week’s hiatus, the special underwater web cam that lets us all see it happening is back online.

The camera was installed at the bottom of the lake earlier this year under a collaboration between Texas State University and Fox News Austin.

But earlier this month the screen went dark explained Ethan Chappell, Aquarena Center’s aquatic maintenance worker.

Initially, he and Shawn O’Shea of Fox News suspected a computer-related problem but the answer was something much less complicated — the chewing jaws of nutria, an exotic species that lives in and around Spring Lake.

“They chewed the cable,” Chappell said of the water rats, adding that a two-foot section of the underwater cable had “about 200 bites” in it.

The web cam went dark on Sunday, April 27, prompting the two to do “a complete diagnostic — everything we could see underwater and on the surface,” Chappell said.

But it wasn’t until they were in the process of taking the camera out for a more thorough check-up that they noticed the bitten stretch of cable that had been located just below the waterline.

“We had only neglected to check that one spot,” Chappell said. “We sort of noticed there was a bunch of bites in the cable and thought that’s what was wrong. Sure enough that was it.”

O’Shea took the apparatus and cables back to his studio where the cable was spliced. Chappell says there’s now a PVC sheeting that should keep the critters from chewing through it again.

Since its debut, the web cam has drawn a lot of interest, both over the Internet and in the minds of young students who see it while taking a glass bottom boat ride.

“It seems to be pretty exciting especially to those school kids,” he said.

Chappell says it still fascinates him too, though he doesn’t expect to see anything new through the underwater cam.

“I’ve spent a lot of personal hours under there. Most of what’s down there I’ve already seen.”

        

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