NOAA and the U.S. Navy are working to better understand underwater sound within the National Marine Sanctuary System. From 2018-2021, these agencies worked with numerous scientific partners to study sound within seven national marine sanctuaries and one marine national monument, which includes waters off Hawai‘i and the east and west coasts. Standardized measurements were used to assess sounds produced by marine animals, physical processes (e.g., wind and waves), and human activities. Collectively, this information will help NOAA and the Navy measure sound levels and baseline acoustic conditions in sanctuaries. This work is a continuation of ongoing Navy and NOAA monitoring and research, including efforts by NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

This dataset includes the SanctSound species detections based on recorded sounds produced by marine animals with those observations aggregated to daily presence. The full resolution SanctSound species detection products can be discovered and accessed at the NCEI Passive Acoustic Data Archive along with the dataset-specific metadata, processing details and citation. Sound sources were extracted from the SanctSound audio dataset also available at the the NCEI Passive Acoustic Data Archive (NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and U.S Navy. 2021. SanctSound Raw Passive Acoustic Data. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/saca-sp25).