This paper proposes and demonstrates a cable tracking system based on a visual feedback navigation as an application for the environmental survey using AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles). The proposed cable tracking system consists of three levels of controllers : (1) The higher level controller decides the AUV's steering mode which includes a mode to search the cable in case that the vehicle loses it. (2) The middle level controller generates target values to realize the steering determined in (1) by fusing vision data and other sensing data. (3) The lower level controller generates control commands for the actuators according to the target values. This paper also addresses the vision processing techniques including Hough transformation and the transformation from two dimensions to three dimensions which are necessary for the steering decision in (1) and the target generation in (2). The proposed system is implemented on an actual AUV named “Twin-Burger 2”. The performance of the system was examined though trials carried out at the Lake Biwa on October 1996. The vehicle navigated for about fifteen minutes without losing the cable although the cable was sporadically veiled in waterweed and transparency of water was not good. It is shown that the vehicle implemented the proposed cable tracking system can be a practical and general platform for environmental survey in the predetermined area.