Marine Acoustic Data Archiving

Charles Anderson( 1)*, Carrie Wall1 (1), Dave Fischman (2), Danielle Austin (1), Anna Milan (2), John Cartwright (2), Susan McLean (2)

Abstract
Marine acoustic data  provide valuable information in the study of our oceans. Data from both water column sonar systems and passive acoustic recorders are used for a variety of research in the fields of marine ecology, oceanography, fisheries management, and geology. The NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and other governmental and academic institutions collect a tremendous amount of marine acoustic data every year, and the rate of data collection is increasing. In addition to informing management decisions, these data represent a valuable resource with uses beyond their original collection purpose.  However, sustainable stewardship of  these data is a growing challenge for NMFS. As a result, NMFS and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) partnered to create a national archive for water column sonar data in 2011 and initiated a pilot project in 2014 to archive passive acoustic data. CIRES staff at NCEI are spearheading this effort. In collaboration with other NCEI staff, they leveraged NCEI’s long history of data stewardship to develop a water column sonar archival system paired with custom data discovery and retrieval tools to facilitate data access and delivery . Since 2013,  over 15 TB of water column sonar data have been archived and almost 10 TB have been delivered to researchers across the globe Challenges faced in both datasets include efficiently ingesting and archiving data volumes measured in hundreds of terabytes, and the need to automatically assess and document acoustic parameters within the data. Documenting parameters within the data is critical to facilitating efficient data discovery and filtering by potential users.