An ultrasonic ocean oil pollution monitor

An ultrasonic beam normally incident on a water-oil interface is used to characterize the presence of an oil film on ocean surface. The ultrasonic characteristics of oil are also obtained and used to identify the oil, as well as the oil layer thickness or parts per million as the case may be. The ocean surface is assumed to me smooth to within one-eighth of wavelength, and if otherwise, a calibration for that particular surface roughness is used to eliminate the effect of such roughness. The temperature compensation is assumed to be incorporated in the hardware design for such apparatus, since temperature variation of physical parameters is well documented in the literature. The classification task may further be considerably simplified, if the possible types of oil expected in such determination for a given location are specified.