The Observatory in Galway Bay is an important contribution by Ireland to the growing global network of real-time data capture systems deployed within the ocean. Installed on the seafloor 1.5km off the coast of Spiddal, the observatory uses cameras, probes and sensors to permit continuous and remote live underwater monitoring. Data relating to the marine environment at the site is transferred in real-time from the Observatory through a fibre optic telecommunications cable to the Marine Institute headquarters and onwards onto the internet.

This dataset comprises of raw (unprocessed) acoustic data that have been collected from the Galway Observatory site using an icListen HF Smart Hydrophone – a digital hydrophone that processes and stores acoustic data. It transmits waveform or spectral data over its data link in real-time. The dataset comprises of a time series of raw acoustic data .wav files collected from the Galway Bay Subsea cabled observatory since its installation in 2015.

The wide frequency range hydrophone is installed on a separate lander approximately 30m away from the EMSO Smartbay Cable End Equipment Node in Galway Bay in approx. 25m depth of water @ 53° 13.640'N 9° 15.979'W.

Waveform data is stored in standard uncompressed WAV file format with meta data stored in file header. This makes data recorded by icListen readable by many third party sound editing programs and analysis tools, as well as by Ocean Sonics’ Lucy software. Practical uses of this dataset includes but are not limited to scientists, researchers and marine technologists involved in the areas of marine mammal monitoring, real-time noise measurement, environmental assessment and improving compliance with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The sound is audible in real-time via: http://smartbay.marine.ie/data/audio/ICListenRecordings/