The Ocean Observatories Initiative Facility Board (OOIFB), funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), is pleased to announce its 2025 Summer School on Acoustics. This 5-day, in-person event, will take place from July 14-18, 2025, at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

This intensive program will feature a mix of targeted lectures, hands-on tutorials, and practical exercises working with real-world examples and NSF OOI data products, with focus on the access, analysis, and interpretation of acoustics data as well as complementary oceanographic data available through the NSF OOI.

NSF OOI consists of various platforms including moored buoys, cabled arrays spanning the seafloor and water column, and autonomous underwater vehicles. Active and passive acoustic instruments including echosounders, current profilers, bioacoustic sonars, broadband hydrophones, and low frequency hydrophones, are part of the NSF OOI sensor network. These acoustic measurements can be applied in many ways, including the detection and characterization of sounds produced by fish, marine mammals, and humans. Researchers are also exploring the use of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) through the NSF OOI. DAS is an observational technique on submarine fiber optic cables, which can be used in the detection, identification, and/or localization of potential acoustic sources such as distant storms, earthquakes, ships, and marine mammals.

Participants can expect to finish the 5-day program with:

A high level understanding of how sound propagates under water and the main factors influencing propagation.
An awareness of passive and active acoustic instruments deployed through NSF OOI (e.g. hydrophones and echosounders) and the data sets available.
The ability to navigate NSF OOI data portals to access and download acoustic and oceanographic data products.
Basic processing methods for acoustic data (including coding, and working with data in JupyterHub environments).
A comprehensive understanding about what scientific questions can be addressed using NSF OOI data.
Connections to a network of professionals who are using or planning to use NSF OOI data in their research and education activities.

Please note: there are no registration fees associated with this program, and travel support is available for participants from U.S. institutions. For more details on program requirements, eligibility, a draft agenda, and online application, please visit the OOIFB Summer School on Acoustics webpage: https://ooifb.org/2025-ooifb-acoustics-summer-school/.

Please share this opportunity widely across your networks! Questions? Please contact Holly Morin (holly@ooifb.org).