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WEIRD DATA IN UNDERWATER ACOUSTICS A brilliant use of this type of fortuitous data was related by Arthur Newhall of WHOI: “Unexpected data can be useful. One of our colleagues ADCPs blew up underwater from a lithium battery leak during SW06 field work off NJ. We knew the exact millisecond that happened from our local data collection receivers there, so used it to calibrate Com- prehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) hydrophones off the coast of South Africa” (personal email, 2022, used with permission). The first step to seizing on opportunities like Newhall’s is talking about our weird data and starting to develop categories and classifications. Automatic, cross-system identification of several of the types of interference listed in Categories of Interference would not be big lifts computationally but will require databases of examples across the many types of acoustic systems and, eventually, open-source filters. The basis of more community-wide libraries and labeled datasets of unusual observations might start with acousticians keeping a folder on their computer of screenshots and brief metadata on surprises. Why not leverage all that weird underwater acoustic data by sharing and identifying all the surprises that the ocean throws at us? Acknowledgments Special thanks to all the colleagues who provided quotes for this article. Data in Figures 3 and 6 come from research supported by the United States Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E). References Amaral, J., Vigness-Raposa, K., Miller, J. H., Potty, G. R., Newhall, A., and Lin, Y.-T. (2020). The underwater sound from offshore wind farms. Acous- tics Today 16(2), 13-22. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2020.16.2.13. Boscolo-Galazzo, F., Crichton, K. A., Ridgwell, A., Mawbey, E. M., Wade, B. S., and Pearson, P. N. (2021). Temperature controls carbon cycling and biological evolution in the ocean twilight zone. Science 371, 1148-1152. Bradley, D. L., and Nichols, S. M. (2015). Worldwide low-frequency ambient noise. Acoustics Today 11(1), 20-26. Casper, B. M., and Babina, M. A. (2022). Human hearing in the under- water environment. Acoustics Today 18(1), 23-31. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2022.18.1.23. Colosi, J. A. (2016). Sound Propagation Through the Stochastic Ocean. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. Dahl, P. H., Miller, J. H., Cato, D. H., and Andrew, R. H. (2007). Underwater ambient noise. Acoustics Today 3(1), 23-34. Francois, R. E., and Garrison, G. R. (1982). Sound absorption based on ocean measurements: Part I: Pure water and magnesium sul- fate contributions. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 72(3), 896-907. Gassmann, M., Wiggins, S. M., and Hildebrand, J. A. (2017). Deep- water measurements of container ship radiated noise signatures and directionality. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142, 1563-1574. Haris, K., Kloser, R. J., Ryan, T. E., Downie, R. A., Keith, G., and Nau, A. W. (2021). Sounding out life in the deep using acoustic data from ships of opportunity. Scientific Data 8, 23. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13172516. Kuperman, W. A., Cornuelle, B., Gemba, K. L., Hodgkiss, W. S., Sarkar, J., Tippmann, J. D., Verlinden, C. M., and Sabra, K. G. (2017). A tomography experiment using ships as sources of opportunity. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 141, 3528. Miksis-Olds, J. L., Martin, B., and Tyack, P. L. (2018). Exploring the ocean through soundscapes. Acoustics Today 14(1), 26-34. Stanton, T. S., Lee, W. J., and Baik, K (2021). Echo classification: Sta- tistics of echo fluctuations. Acoustics Today 17(2) 61-70. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2021.17.2.61. Wall, C. C., Haver, S. M., Hatch, L. T., Miksis-Olds J., Bochenek, R., Dziak, R. P., and Gedamke, J. (2021). The next wave of passive acoustic data management: How centralized access can enhance science. Frontiers in Marine Science 8, 703682. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.703682. Worcester, P. F., Dzieciuch, M. A., and Sagen, H. (2020). Ocean acous- tics in the rapidly changing Arctic. Acoustics Today 16(1), 55-64. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2020.16.1.55. About the Author Erin M. Fischell efischell@acbotics.com Acbotics Research, LLC 82 Technology Park Drive East Falmouth, Massachusetts 02536, USA Erin M. Fischell is president of Acbot- ics Research, an underwater acoustics, robotics, and sensing company in East Falmouth, Massachusetts. A Moore Inven- tor Fellow with more than 15 years of marine robotics and underwater acoustics expertise, Dr. Fischell’s research spans propagation physics, autonomy, signal processing, and robot perception topics. She received a BS from Cornell Univer- sity, Ithaca, New York, in 2010 and a PhD in mechanical and oceanographic engineering from the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program in 2015. Dr. Fischell taught array processing and environmental ocean acoustics courses and ran the marine unmanned robotics and acoustics laboratory as an assistant scientist at WHOI from 2017 to 2021. 42 Acoustics Today • Summer 2022