side scan sonar
3 stories filed under side scan sonar on World Data Ocean. The newest of them: “Sharpening Sonar Detection with Gated Output and Adaptive Loss Integration”, “Mapping the Seafloor: Detecting Ghost Nets with Side-Scan Sonar”, and “Mapping Kelp Biomass: New Sonar Tech Streamlines Offshore Aquaculture Monitoring”. Small sonar targets vanish against blurred boundaries and complex seafloor backgrounds, weakening features and destabilizing box regression. A single sonar ping can reveal a tangled net resting on the seafloor, but telling it apart from a rock or a reef is where the real work begins. A Global Hub for Ocean Intelligence 4 World Data Ocean is a centralized digital platform where researchers, scientists, and ocean enthusiasts converge to… The list below is every side scan sonar story on World Data Ocean, newest first.
Sharpening Sonar Detection with Gated Output and Adaptive Loss Integration
Small sonar targets vanish against blurred boundaries and complex seafloor backgrounds, weakening features and destabilizing box regression. This study sharpens detection with a YOLOv26n detector using Gated Output-16 and adaptive loss integration. Gated Output-16 preserves the original feature path at initialization, while MPDIoU-NWD applies scale-aware supervision, Normalized Wasserstein Distance for targets under 1024 pixels². The result: 62.65% mAP50:95 and 85.77% recall, improving baseline by 2.22 and 4.22 points respectively. For deeper context on validated ocean data, see our related coverage on the global
Mapping the Seafloor: Detecting Ghost Nets with Side-Scan Sonar
A single sonar ping can reveal a tangled net resting on the seafloor, but telling it apart from a rock or a reef is where the real work begins. Oceanographers still guide much of the detection process manually, interpreting acoustic returns frame by frame. Ghost nets are difficult to classify because their shape and density vary with depth, current, and decay. Side-scan sonar offers a clear image, yet the final call often rests on human judgment.
Mapping Kelp Biomass: New Sonar Tech Streamlines Offshore Aquaculture Monitoring
Sonar has long proven its value in fisheries, yet its application to commercial kelp farming has remained largely unexplored. That gap now closes with a method that transforms side scan sonar observations into reliable estimates of kelp height and standing biomass. By applying geometric principles to each farm line, the approach delivers validated results from an offshore installation near Santa Barbara. This is practical ocean intelligence, reducing labor and cost while supporting informed decisions at scale.