Book excerpt: Multibeam echo-sounders such as Sea Beam allow investigators to carry out detailed bathymetric surveys of large areas of the seafloor. However, bathymetry only reveals the shape of seafloor features to the resolution of the sounding system, and in order to make geological interpretations one needs to characterize the nature of the seafloor surveyed. Because bottom roughness and/or variations in bottom substrate cause fluctuations in the backscattered acoustic signal received by an echo sounder such characteristics can be inferred in part by analyzing the structure and the variations of this signal over several transmission cycles. The approach taken has been to record digitally the detected echo envelopes of Sea Beam's 16 narrow beams over a variety of seafloor environments, and process these data to determine whether the acoustics held enough information to differentiate between bottom types. Significant results derived from these acoustic data concern the Sea Beam system's performance; its potential for mapping acoustic boundaries; and the display of the echoes received in a side looking sonar like picture.