Sofar Ocean

09/02/2026

Introducing the next generation of Spotter Sound, bringing real-time, always-on listening to underwater acoustics.

Sofar Ocean's latest, AI-enabled hydrophone can detect and classify vessels and marine mammals with no recording gaps.

What that looks like in the field:

→ Ports get scalable detection and classification of vessel traffic in the water for full coverage monitoring

→ Researchers get marine mammal detections in time to act on them

→ Construction teams catch noise exceedances as they happen

Join our webinar September 16 at 9:00 AM PDT for a first look, including a live look at acoustics data in the Spotter Dashboard and Q&A with the engineers behind the hydrophone.

Save your spot: https://tinyurl.com/38nw4mdn

09/01/2026

August was an active month across the Pacific with 18 storms, spread from the South China Sea to Central America.

Sofar Ocean Spotters caught them as they tore through the basin.

Starting the month off strong, SPOT-33176C sat 20 km from Typhoon Dolphin's core and measured a 12.12 m significant wave height, nearly seven times the height of a person. Three weeks later SPOT-31867C rode out Typhoon Saudel 71 km from the center with significant wave heights peaking above 8 m.

This El Niño is still building with NOAA declaring a 95% chance for a ‘very strong’ El Niño through the end of the year.

Track real-time observations from across the Pacific this El Niño season: https://bit.ly/4xyXCE4

08/28/2026

08/26/2026

A Sofar Ocean Spotter recorded 8.5 m significant wave height just 70 km from Typhoon Saudel's eye.

With six active storms churning across the Pacific this week, the ocean is not slowing down. In the Eastern Pacific, two tropical storms are brewing off the southern coast of Baja California. In the Central Pacific, Hurricane Lala skirted the Hawaiian Islands before weakening to a tropical storm, bringing high winds and heavy rain. And in the Western Pacific, SPOT-31867C sat directly in Typhoon Saudel's path, capturing the storm near its peak.

Named storms are forming about three weeks ahead of a typical season's pace this year, fueled by a strong El Niño pushing sea surface temperatures nearly 2.1°C (3.6°F) above average.

Track real-time observations across the El Niño storm season: https://tinyurl.com/3pdhzf45

08/25/2026

This week, Sofar Ocean is headed to Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport for Blue Tide!

On Day 1, in collaboration with Applied Ocean Sciences LLC (AOS), we’ll be demonstrating Spotter’s rapidly deployable real-time environmental and passive acoustic monitoring capabilities.

Sofar Ocean is the ocean intelligence platform built from sensor to decision. AOS specializes in developing novel, disruptively affordable, low-power acoustic systems.

We’re excited to see some some Spotters in action!

08/24/2026

🚁 Summer: helicopter pilot boarding, 60km offshore.

📻 Winter: shore-based pilotage once the wind hits Beaufort 7.

In this episode of the Wayfinder Podcast, Captain Joost Mulder, a maritime pilot in the Port of Rotterdam with over 20 years of experience walks us through how pilotage decisions shift with the seasons.

Listen to the full conversation: [Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/mty84ydc | Blog: https://tinyurl.com/24w8puce]

08/20/2026

Hydrophones let us decode underwater languages.

🐬 This spectrogram captures dolphins making a variety of whistling noises, accompanied by the sound of a high-frequency vessel.

Dolphins can swim around 100 km a day, weaving in and out of protected, monitored zones. Visual surveys to track their movements outside of these zones are weather-dependent, expensive to sustain, and limited to daylight hours. This leaves a substantial gap in tracking dolphins and other marine mammals, putting them at risk of vessel strikes.

Spotter Sound closes that gap: an AI-enabled, real-time passive acoustic monitoring platform that detects and classifies underwater sound, such as whale and dolphin vocalizations, as they happen.

Over months and seasons, the same recordings build a long-term record of presence patterns that gives managers a meaningful baseline for operational decision making.

08/18/2026

At Sofar Ocean, first-party data is a cornerstone.

From proprietary weather powering route guidance in Wayfinder to our Vessel Performance Model, the quality of our insights depends on the quality of the data behind them. The more accurate and timely that data, the better the optimization.

Wayfinder Data Health brings that same standard to your fleet's data.

Available to both shoreside and vessel teams, Data Health gives Wayfinder customers direct visibility into their fleet's data quality and availability so you can identify issues early and track improvements over time.

Better data visibility means better decisions at sea.

🚢 Read more: https://tinyurl.com/5n7p86z2

08/17/2026

"No two days are the same." 🌊⚓

In this episode of the Wayfinder Podcast, we sit down with Captain Joost Mulder, a maritime pilot in the Port of Rotterdam. 22 years piloting ships through the Port of Rotterdam, and Captain Mulder says it's never once been boring. 🚢

Different berths, different vessels, different weather.

Listen to the full conversation on adverse-weather pilotage decisions: [Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/mty84ydc | Blog: https://tinyurl.com/24w8puce]

08/13/2026

Increased precipitation and storm surge are expected along the Pacific coast of the Americas as El Niño intensifies. Peru's maritime authority has already closed ports across its southern, central, and northern zones this summer due to anomalous swells.

Port closures are just one artifact of this season's El Niño. Every port faces its own version of the disruption: compressed dredging windows from decreased water levels in the western Pacific, to South Asia, where increased regional variability leaves ports facing either insufficient draft or flooding.

With this season's El Niño among the strongest since 1950, we broke down what that means for port infrastructure and maritime operations across the globe.

🔗 Full paper: https://hubs.ly/Q04sJwJR0