NOAA Passive Acoustic Archive

[kzacarian]

We recently had a great call with Carrie Wall Bell, who is leading the NOAA passive acoustic archive, available on GCP to support immediate access and facilitate 'in place' processing. According to their website, Data are free and without copyright restriction.

_Data Collection and Applications
Passive acoustic monitoring of the ocean sound field is a critical aspect of NOAA’s mandate for ocean and coastal data stewardship. Sound can travel vast distances underwater (e.g., across ocean basins) making passive acoustic monitoring a powerful observational tool that is used across NOAA to detect and characterize:

• sounds produced and used by living marine resources (e.g., endangered marine mammals, commercially important fish species)
• natural sources of noise from physical oceanographic processes
• anthropogenic noise sources that contribute to the overall ocean noise environment
• Passive acoustic data are used broadly across NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) line offices for a wide range of activities central to NOAA’s mission including marine mammal stock assessments, monitoring of earthquake and geological activity, and assessing impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life.

Data Stewardship
NCEI and NOAA line offices are collaborating to create an archive for passive acoustic data from a number of sources throughout government and academia._