Shipboard polarized lidar for seawater column sounding

Shipboard polarized lidar for upper seawater column sounding through sea surface was designed. The lidar was designed to obtain the vertical profiles of hydro-optical properties and to locate of subsurface high-scattering layers and some different inhomogeneities. The source of the linearly polarized light sounding pulses is YAP:Nd Q-switched laser with SHG. Two identical photo-receiving devices are used to register waveforms of the two orthogonal-polarized components of echo-signal power. Field experiments with the use of the device were carried out at the several areas of the Atlantic Ocean. Subsurface high-scattering layers were detected during the field experiments.