Charles R. Greene, Jr.
Greeneridge Sciences, Inc., Santa Barbara, CA 93110
William Koski
LGL Ltd., Envir. Res. Assoc., King City, ON L7B 1A6, Canada
Air-dropped sonobuoys have been used to record sounds near bowhead whales since 1979. They have not been observed to react to sonobuoys dropped 0.5--1 km from them during numerous studies conducted during the summer; however, on a few occasions they have reacted to sonobuoys air dropped near them during their spring and fall migrations. The sound from an AN/SSQ-57A sonobuoy impact was recorded at distance 800 m in water 90 m deep in the western Beaufort Sea. Hydrophone depths were 3 and 18 m. Analysis of the impact signature and sound transmission paths revealed two reflected paths: one with a single bottom reflection and the second with two bottom reflections. A third arrival, occurring later and very weak, was also noted. The presence of a strong, low-frequency sound source nearby led us to high-pass filter the signal at 1 kHz. Analysis of the received signal amplitude, corrected for spreading loss, revealed a peak source pressure level of 211 dB re: 1 (mu)Pa/m. The positive acoustic impulse at a distance of 1 m, assuming no positive pulse spreading and scaling the pressure for spherical spreading, is estimated to be 5.55 Pa/s. The overall sound duration of the single bottom bounce arrival was 0.9 ms. [Work supported by MMS.]