Fwd: New U.S. Ocean Sound Monitoring and Condition Reporting website!
Mathew Biddle - NOAA Federal
From: Carrie Wall Bell - NOAA Affiliate <carri...@noaa.gov>
Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Subject: New U.S. Ocean Sound Monitoring and Condition Reporting website!
To: Lindsey Peavey - NOAA Affiliate <lindsey...@noaa.gov>, <lre...@marinesanctuary.org>, Carrie Wall Bell - NOAA Affiliate <carri...@noaa.gov>, Emma Beretta - NOAA Affiliate <emma.b...@noaa.gov>, Samara Haver - NOAA Affiliate <samara....@noaa.gov>, Timothy Rowell - NOAA Federal <timothy...@noaa.gov>, Eden Zang - NOAA Affiliate <eden...@noaa.gov>, <ez...@marinesanctuary.org>, John Ryan <ry...@mbari.org>, Quincy Cantu - NOAA Affiliate <quincy...@noaa.gov>, Anastasia Kunz - NOAA Affiliate <anastas...@noaa.gov>
We are pleased to announce the launch of the new U.S. Ocean Sound Monitoring and Condition Reporting website. This platform uses 12 National Marine Sanctuaries as geographic management areas to present standardized time-series metrics of sound levels, detection products, and other ocean indicators across 29 monitoring stations.
As a nationally coordinated passive acoustic monitoring community, our goal is to provide place-based, contextualized soundscape information that aligns with international standards and supports research activities, resource protection, and management.
We gratefully acknowledge the following data providers for making underwater sound recordings, some dating back to 2014, accessible via NCEI’s Passive Acoustic Data Archive, enabling this large-scale reporting effort: NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries; NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service; NOAA/National Park Service’s Ocean Noise Reference Station Network; Naval Postgraduate School, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The soundscape data processing and visualizations featured in these reports build on years of collaborative work, especially community standards and tools developed during the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System, Bureau for Ocean Energy Management, U.S. Navy Living Marine Resources, and the Office of Naval Research SoundCoop project, and the NMFS Passive Acoustic Monitoring Strategic Initiative.
Special thanks to Megan McKenna and Leila Hatch for their vision, leadership, and expertise in creating the initial design and scope of this platform.
Future website updates will expand geographic coverage (e.g., Gulf of Maine), extend time-series, incorporate additional monitoring locations and data providers, introduce new ocean indicators, and implement interactivity.
We welcome your feedback and encourage you to explore and share the reports widely. Thank you for your continued interest and support.
Sincerely,
Lindsey Peavey Reeves
Carrie Wall Bell
Emma Beretta
Samara Haver
Tim Rowell
Eden Zang
John Ryan
Quincy Cantu
Anastasia Kunz
… and many more collaborators!
Carrie C. Wall, PhD
Ocean Acoustic Archives
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder
Embedded in the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305
In support of NOAA Fisheries
CIRES | Water Column Sonar Archive | Passive Acoustic Archive
NOAA/NOS
US Integrated Ocean Observing System Office
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring MD 20910