Remote identification of a shipwreck site from MBES backscatter.

The method described attempts to remotely identify the shape of an anthropogenic object, such as a wreck of a modern vessel, using reflectivity data from Multi-Beam Echosounder (MBES) systems. In the beam domain, the backscatter strength values - geometrically and radiometrically corrected - are used to extract a large number of Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) features with different input parameters. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied in order to achieve dimensionality reduction whilst a K-means algorithm clusters as "shipwreck site" a large number of beams for each line. After the geo-referencing process, a K-nearest-neighbors (K-NN) technique is applied as a filter for possible misclassifications. Finally, the shape of the shipwreck site is defined from the georeferenced beams using the α-shape method, constructing an output compatible with Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Focused sound from three-dimensional sound propagation effects over a submarine canyon.

Ship noise data reveal an intensification of the near-surface sound field over a submarine canyon. Numerical modeling of sound propagation is used to study the effect. The noise data were collected during an ocean acoustic and physical oceanography experiment northeast of Taiwan in 2009. In situ measurements of water sound-speed profiles and a database of high-resolution bathymetry are used in the modeling study. The model results suggest that the intensification is caused by three-dimensional sound focusing by the concave canyon seafloor. Uncertainties in the model results from unsampled aspects of the environment are discussed.