Carrie C. Wall

Marine Scientist, Ocean Data Expert, Little Sister.

- Jeremy A. Wall

Carrie C. Wall has one of the best jobs ever. She’s a marine scientist who has studied sea lions in Alaska, tracked dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, and dived deep underwater around the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Today, Wall is leading the development of an archive for water column sonar data at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. What does all that mean? I have no idea, but since she also happens to be my little sister, I thought I’d give her a call and find out exactly what she’s doing, and why it’s so important.

HEY SIS. SO AN ARCHIVE FOR WATER COLUMN SONAR DATA. BREAK THAT DOWN FOR ME. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SONAR DATA?

Sure! Basically, there are two ways sound can help us learn about the ocean. One way is using what we call passive acoustics. That’s putting a microphone in the water and listening to the sounds animals create. Like a whale singing! The other way is active acoustics, which uses sonar. Sonar instruments send out a sound pulse that bounces off anything it comes in contact with. And I mean anything. The sea floor, shipwrecks, fish, plankton, even gas bubbles. A device on the ship can then interpret these bounces into sonar data (information we can read). It lets us peek into the water column.

GOT IT. AND WHAT’S A WATER COLUMN?

The water column is the surface of the ocean, all the way down to the sea floor.

SONAR LETS YOU SEE EVERYTHING GOING ON UNDERWATER?