Shelf Break Acoustics-NESBA and SCS Data Analysis

Sound propagation in the ocean can be affected by many environmental factors, including physical oceanography (PO), marine geology (GEO) and biology (BIO). The primary objective of this project is to investigate the physics link between acoustics and environment variabilities. The ocean processes of particular interest include shelf-break fronts, thermohaline intrusions, surface mixed layers, and internal waves (Lin et al., 2009; Lynch et al., 2010; Lin and Lynch, 2011; Duda et al., 2012; Lynch et al., 2012; Emerson et al., 2015) along with other significant marine geological features and biological factors, such as submarine canyons (Lin et al., 2015), seabed properties (Ballard et al., 2010; Ballard et al., 2019), and fish schooling and shoaling (Newhall etal., 2017). Data collected in the shelf break areas of the New England shelf (see Figure 1) and northern South China Sea (see Figure 2) were studied. These two experiments were supported by the ONR Task Force Ocean (TFO) Program. The research approach is employed to enhance theory development, numerical modeling and field work experiments with strong interdisciplinary collaborations.