Variation of underwater ambient noise observed at IORS station as a pilot study

Abstract

The Iedo Ocean Research Station(IORS) is an integrated meteorological and oceanographic observation base which was constructed on the Ieodo underwater rock located at a distance of about 150 km to the south-west of the Mara-do, the southernmost island in Korea. The underwater ambient noise level observed at the IORS was similar to the results of the shallow water surrounding the Korean Peninsula (Choi et al. 2003) and was higher than that of deep ocean (Wenz 1962). The wind dependence of ambient noise was dominant at frequencies of a few kHz. The surface current dependence of ambient noise showed good correlation with the ambient noise in the frequency of 10 kHz. Especially, the shrimp sound was estimated through investigations of waveform and spectrum and its main acoustic energy was about 40 dB larger than ambient noise level at 5 kHz.