Fair enough, sorry to be a pendantic jackass. It's morning where I'm at; coffee had not yet occured.

It's a unit of measurement used to express the ratio of one quantity to another. The medium has nothing to do with it.

To convert between dB in water and air, just subtract 26dB from the measured water SPL. This is necessary because sound measured in air uses a reference level of 20upa @ 1m, water has a reference level of 1upa @ 1m.

I'd also argue whale vocalizations are likely omnidirection, since it's a method of communication and would be pretty ineffective if you had to aim it across an ocean and hope someone happened to be on the receiving end.

Still wondering which unit you'd prefer to use?

Decibles are definitely used for measuring sound in a radius (or in this case, a free field). I'm curious to hear why you think it isn't a good way of measuring SPL, and which units you would use instead?

(I agree with everything else you said.)

Nemo 2: Bukkake Boogaloo

...or planes juat falling out of the aky, because someone forgot.