Coherent and incoherent scattering by oceanic bubbles

A substantial amount of research on acoustic scattering by underwater bubbles is based on the theory of incoherent scattering. More recent work, devoted to much denser bubble assemblies, has instead used effective-media formulations that presuppose coherent effects. Here the mutual relationship between the two approaches i elucidated. It is shown that, underlying the incoherent results, is a WKB approximate solution of the effective equations. As an application, the scattering by tenuous subsurface bubble layers and acoustical bubble counting techniques are examined. Significant differences with previous results are found.