Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) has recently been shown to be capable of instantaneously imaging and continuously monitoring fish populations over continental shelf-scale areas, covering thousands of km 2 . We show how OAWRS can be used in a variety of oceanic ecosystems to remotely assess populations and study the behavior of fish and other marine organisms, such as Antarctic krill, to help the study of marine ecology and the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management.

The scintillation statistics of broadband acoustic transmissions are determined as a function of signal bandwidth B, center frequency f(c), and range with experimental data in the New Jersey continental shelf. The received signal intensity is shown to follow the Gamma distribution implying that the central limit theorem has led to a fully saturated field from independent multimodal propagation contributions. The Gamma distribution depends on the mean intensity and the number of independent statistical fluctuations or coherent cells micro of the received signal. The latter is calculated for the matched filter, the Parseval sum, and the bandpassed center frequency, all of which are standard ocean acoustic receivers. The number of fluctuations mu of the received signal is found to be an order of magnitude smaller than the time-bandwidth product TB of the transmitted signal, and to increase monotonically with relative bandwidth Bfc. A computationally efficient numerical approach is developed to predict the mean intensity and the corresponding broadband transmission loss of a fluctuating, range-dependent ocean waveguide by range and depth averaging the output of a time-harmonic stochastic propagation model. This model enables efficient and accurate estimation of transmission loss over wide areas, which has become essential in wide-area sonar imaging applications.

The mean and variance of the acoustic field forward propagated through a stratified ocean waveguide containing three-dimensional ͑3-D͒ random internal waves is modeled using an analytic normal mode formulation. The formulation accounts for the accumulated effects of multiple forward scattering. These lead to redistribution of both coherent and incoherent modal energies, including attenuation and dispersion. The inhomogeneous medium's scatter function density is modeled using the Rayleigh-Born approximation to Green's theorem to account for random fluctuations in both density and compressibility caused by internal waves. The generalized waveguide extinction theorem is applied to determine attenuation due to scattering from internal wave inhomogeneities. Simulations for typical continental-shelf environments show that when internal wave height exceeds the acoustic wavelength, the acoustic field becomes so randomized that the expected total intensity is dominated by the field variance beyond moderate ranges. This leads to an effectively saturated field that decays monotonically and no longer exhibits the periodic range-dependent modal interference structure present in nonrandom waveguides. Three-dimensional scattering effects can become important when the Fresnel width approaches and exceeds the cross-range coherence length of the internal wave field. Density fluctuations caused by internal waves are found to noticably affect acoustic transmission in certain Arctic environments.

Formation elastic properties near a borehole may be altered from their original state due to the stress concentration around the borehole. This could result in a biased estimation of formation properties but could provide a means to estimate in situ stress from sonic logging data. In order to properly account for the formation property alteration, we propose an iterative numerical approach to calculate the stress-induced anisotropy around a borehole by combining the rock physics model of Mavko et al. (1995) and a finite-element method.We show the validity and accuracy of our approach by comparing numerical results to laboratory measurements of the stress-strain relation of a sample of Berea sandstone, which contains a borehole and is subjected to uniaxial stress loading. Our iterative approach converges very fast and can be applied to calculate the spatially varying stiffness tensor of 1 the formation around a borehole for any given stress state.2

An analytical expression is derived for the temporal coherence of an acoustic field after multiple forward scattering through random three-dimensional (3D) inhomogeneities in an ocean waveguide. This expression makes it possible to predict the coherence time scale of field fluctuations in ocean-acoustic measurements from knowledge of the oceanography. It is used to explain the time scale of acoustic field fluctuations observed at megameter ranges in various deep ocean-acoustic transmission experiments. It is shown that this time scale is nonlinearly related to the much longer coherence time scale of deep ocean internal waves through a multiple forward scattering process. It is also shown that 3D scattering effects become pronounced when the acoustic Fresnel width exceeds the cross-range coherence length of the deep ocean internal waves, which lead to frequency and range-dependent power losses in the forward field that may help to explain historic long range measurements.