BOAT: Bridge to Ocean Acoustics and Technology
Ocean acoustics is an interdisciplinary field in which researchers focus on measuring, modeling, and understanding acoustic phenomena of oceanographical, geological, biological, and anthropogenic sources. However, despite its inherent interdisciplinary nature, Ocean acoustics research currently has limited presence in most US institutions and is typically viewed as a highly niched field.
The Bridge to Ocean Acoustics and Technology (BOAT) program aims to broaden access to ocean acoustics by empowering learners to explore and advance the field through collaboration and shared knowledge, focusing on:
- Developing open, executable, and web-hosted tutorials that encapsulate fundamental ocean acoustics knowledge and techniques as living documents.
- Growing the ocean acoustics education and research community through interactive and collaborative workshops.
Our goal is to create open tutorials that can 1) be adapted to various educational settings, including regular university courses or summer workshops, and 2) serve as blueprints for further developing in-depth resources on specific ocean acoustics topics.
You can learn more on the program philosophy page.
As part of the pilot phase, we organized two education workshops to provide a hands-on introduction to ocean acoustics—from fundamental concepts to real-world applications—using interactive Jupyter notebooks. The first workshop was in Seattle, and the second one was in New Orleans (preceding the 188th ASA Meeting). Both workshops involved participants (undergraduate, graduate, postdocs) from across the country. They covered topics broadly applicable to both active and passive acoustics, with hands-on experience using echosounder and hydrophone datasets. All tutorial content is packaged as open source digital book and also suitable for self-study, or adaptation to other education settings.
Funding Agency: Office of Naval Research, Ocean Acoustics Program
