Marine fouling of bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays

A facility of the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) is the weapons range which is installed on the bottom of the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO) just east of Andros Island. The weapons range consists, in part, of bottom mounted hydrophones each individually cabled back to electronics equipment ashore. Figure 1 is a photograph of the hydrophone and its support structure just prior to be in glowered to the ocean floor on its signal cable. The hydrophone structures are implanted in water depths averaging 5000 feet, and were installed between January and July of 1966.