A primary goal of this research is to model biological clutter in the continental shelf environments of the ocean. We aim to do this by modeling scattered returns from fish shoals in continental shelf environments using a full field matched filter approach as well as its single frequency approximation. This will help in characterizing clutter and will help distinguish scattered fields of moving...

Both physical oceanographic processes and marine geological features in the continental shelf can cause the medium properties to have lateral heterogeneity, so horizontal refraction of sound can occur and produce significant three-dimensional (3-D) sound propagation effects. The long-term goals of this project are targeted on understanding the 3-D acoustic effects caused by the environmental fa...

Sediment-water fluxes were measured on transects across the northern Alaskan continental margin. Dissolved oxygen fluxes approximated total carbon dioxide fluxes when fluxes were low, but oxygen underestimated the higher total carbon dioxide fluxes. This follows a diagenetic model in which aerobic sediments occur below 86 μmol total carbon dioxide m -2 h -1 and anaerobic conditions intensify wi...

Many environmental factors may contribute to acoustic clutter and adversely affect the performance of tactical sonar by introducing false alarms in the system. During the Main Acoustic Experiment (MAE) 2003 of the Acoustic Clutter program, densely populated fish shoals were identified to be the dominant cause of shallow water acoustic clutter in the New Jersey Continental Shelf. The mixing of c...

Sediment samples were collected to delineate the distribution of contaminants along the central California coast. Sampling included a variety of Canyons and shelf/slope areas to evaluate contaminant transport patterns and potential delivery to Canyons and the continental slope to a depth of 1200 m. Sediments were collected and analyzed for organic contaminants using standard techniques of the N...

Environmental conditions fostering marine communities around Antarctica differ fundamentally from those in the rest of the world's oceans, particularly in terms of pronounced climatic fluctuations and extreme cold. Here, we argue that the rarity of pelagic larval stages in Antarctic marine benthic invertebrate species is a consequence of evolutionary temperature adaptation and that this has gre...

STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE The common dolphin may be one of the most widely distributed species of cetaceans, as it is found world-wide in temperate, tropical, and subtropical seas. In the North Atlantic, common dolphins appears to be present along the coast over the continental shelf along the 200-300 m isobaths or over prominent underwater topography from 50E N to 40ES latitude (Ev...

STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE The common dolphin may be one of the most widely distributed species of cetaceans, as it is found world-wide in temperate, tropical, and subtropical seas. In the North Atlantic, common dolphins appears to be present along the coast over the continental shelf along the 200-300 m isobaths or over prominent underwater topography from 50E N to 40ES latitude (Ev...

Continental margins play an important role in global carbon cycle, accounting for 15-21% of the global marine primary production. Since carbon fluxes across continental margins from land to the open ocean are not well constrained, we undertook a study to develop satellite algorithms to retrieve dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and combined these satellite data with physical circulation model prod...

The benthic fauna of the shelf off East Antarctica is relatively unexplored, when compared to regions like the West Antarctic Peninsula and Ross Sea. The continental shelf of Antarctica is unusually deep (average depth 450 m) and in some places as wide as 125 km. Though this shelf covers a vast area (nearly 11.4% of the world continental shelf area), baseline information on species occurrence i...