LAUSR

This paper estimates seabed and water-column properties of a shallow-water site in the Chukchi Sea using bowhead whale calls recorded on asynchronous ocean-bottom hydrophones. Up- and down-swept bowhead whale calls were recorded on a cluster of seven hydrophones within a 5 km radius. The calls excited multiple propagating modes, with modal dispersion controlled by environmental properties and whale-recorder range. Frequency-dependent mode arrival times for nine whale calls are inverted using a trans-dimensional (trans-D) Bayesian approach that estimates the whale locations (easting and northing) and range-independent environmental properties (sound-speed profile, water depth, and seabed geoacoustic profiles). The trans-D inversion allows the data to determine the most appropriate environmental model parameterization in terms of the number of sound-speed profile nodes and subbottom layers. The inversion also estimates each whale-call instantaneous frequency function, relative recorder clock offsets, and re...