Correlating acoustical with physical and biological oceanography

Abstract

The Centre for Marine Science & Technology at Curtin University built and maintains the underwater acoustic recorders of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS; <a href="http://IMOS.org.au).">http://IMOS.org.au).</a> Recordings have been obtained at four locations (off Western Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales) since 2011. IMOS includes a multitude of oceanographic and remote sensors, contributed by various institutions, which are also responsible for data management. Data are shared and publicly available encouraging collaboration and syntheses. This study has compiled time series of weather data, tides, current data (from Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers, ADCP), and wind (from radar measurements), and established correlations with underwater noise is a series of one-third octave bands between 10 Hz and 3 kHz from the Perth Canyon. Our results further demonstrate that ocean noise in certain frequency bands can be used to estimate aspects of physical and biological oceanography.