Sanctuary Soundscape Monitoring Project (SanctSound)

Exploring underwater sounds within the U.S. National Marine Sanctuary System

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Navy are working to better understand underwater sound within the National Marine Sanctuary System. Since fall 2018, the agencies have been working with a number of scientific partners to study sound within seven national marine sanctuaries and one marine national monument, in waters off Hawai’i and the U.S. East and West Coasts. Standardized measurements are being used to identify sounds produced by marine animals, physical processes (e.g., wind and waves), and human activities, and comparisons are being made across these 30 nationally-distributed locations. Information from this project will be available to the public to download and explore starting in 2022. In the meantime, this story map invites you to take a tour of the places where this work is underway and introduces you to some of the questions this project seeks to answer in order to better understand and protect these special underwater places.