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Ocean Sound Range: Frequency-Dependent Attenuation

Interactive 3D simulator of underwater sound propagation: pick a real source (blue whale, humpback song, dolphin clicks, a container ship) and watch Thorp's frequency-dependent absorption plus geometric spreading decide how far the sound actually carries before it drops below the ocean's ambient noise floor.

Climate, Ecology & Environment3DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

Underwater sound doesn't just get quieter with distance — it gets quieter at wildly different rates depending on its pitch. This simulator models real underwater acoustic transmission loss: geometric spreading (spherical in the open deep ocean, cylindrical inside a sound channel) combined with Thorp's frequency-dependent seawater absorption formula. Pick a real source — a 20 Hz blue whale call, a 3 kHz humpback song, a 110 kHz dolphin echolocation click, or a 100 Hz container-ship engine — or dial in your own frequency and source level, then drag a listener buoy out along a logarithmic range axis from 0.1 km to 3,000 km and watch the received level and detection verdict update against the ocean's ambient noise floor in real time.

⚙ Under the hood

Pick a real underwater sound source — a 20 Hz blue whale call, a humpback song, a dolphin echolocation click, or a container ship — and watch Thorp's frequency-dependent absorption formula and geometric spreading decide how far it actually travels before dropping below the ocean's ambient noise floor.

ocean acousticsunderwater soundThorp absorptionSOFAR channelmarine bioacousticstransmission loss

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install