Optical Properties of Seawater with Submerged Bubbles Generated by Ship Wakes

Ship wake's properties have been extensively studied through the ages. However, there were few researches on above-water spectral features of ship wake, especially features with submerged bubbles. With the higher resolution of space borne optical sensor, measurement for ship wakes by optical remote sensing is feasible. To make fully use of remote sensing to monitor ships, some experiments have been undertaken to measure physical and optical properties of ship wakes with bubbles, and to investigate how bubbles would affect the optical property of water in different water bodies. This research can establish some theoretical basis on capturing the information of ship wake by space borne optical sensors. Our experiments proved that relative to the background waters' over visible and infrared wave bands, both water-leaving radiance and remote sensing reflectance of ship wake with bubbles had more or less varied. Both the amplification and increased value of R_rs in Case-I waters are much larger than those in Case-II waters.