The Optical Information Transmission in the Ocean

Ocean optics is generally considered as a branch of oceanography, but in recent years is also as a branch of the modern optics. Because of recent development of laser, optical electronics, computer and information processing, satellite remote sensing and their wide application in ocean science and exploitation, many new problems in ocean optics have been put before scientists. The specially important one is the optical information transmission in the ocean, including the narrow beam transmission of lidar in the ocean, the image transmission of underwater vision system, the data transmission of underwater laser communication, the information extraction of upwelling spectral radiance. So the ocean optics should be developed from a new point of view, i.e. the information transmission of light in the sea. This paper will discuss several problems in this aspect.