Originally published by EurekAlert!

SoundCoop builds community-focused cyberinfrastructure to promote improved, scalable and sustainable processing and access of marine passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) data for management, science, industry and military applications to examine soundscapes and their ecological and human-related drivers in marine ecosystems throughout the global ocean. These efforts are aimed at promoting species protection, lowering noise in protected places, and investigating blue economy activity in coastal and offshore environments.Driven by cross-institutional participation and funding from over 9 institutions including IOOS and SECOORA,  representing a diversity of data collection methods and conditions, it establishes guidance for standardized processing of ocean sound level metrics using freeware software toolkits and developed core tools and processes that support open science.  It combines 12 projects (AEON, AFSC-ALTIMA, BOEM-Cornell, ESONS, FRAM, JOMOPANS, MBARI-MARS, NEFSC, NRS, NYSDEC-Cornell, SanctSound, and SWAL), 10 recording systems (AMAR, AUH, AURAL, DSG, HARP, icListen, MARU, SEH, SoundTrap, and SonoVault), 7 geographic regions (Acrtic Ocean, Central California Coast, Fram Strait, Gulf of Maine, Mid Atlantic, North Sea, and Southeast US Estuary), 17 year span of data (Sep 26, 2006–Apr 23, 2023), and 2–256 kHz sample data (with duty cycles varying from 2 min per hour to continuous). Read more about their novel findings here or in the published journal Big Earth Data on 4 December 2025.