The amount of sound reflected from the sea floor is highly variable. It is dependent on the angle of incidence of the sound wave, (called the grazing angle), the smoothness of the sea floor, the sea floor composition, and the frequency of the sound.

Sound energy is well reflected when it bounces off a flat surface normal to the sound waves path of travel. However at an oblique angle, much of the sound is reflected at a complementary angle away from the receiver. Similarly rough surfaces tend to scatter the sound energy in directions away from the source. This generally dissipates the received sound level, but can enhance it when the angle of interception with the surface would otherwise reflect most of the sound energy away.

Some of the sound energy is lost into the sea floor itself. The amount sound energy will propagate into the sea floor is highly dependent on the frequency and bottom composition. For a typical bottom type and nominal source level, frequencies above 10kHz penetrate very little. From 1kHz to 10kHz sound often penetrates to several meters of depth. From 100 Hz to 1kHz sound can penetrate to several 10s of meters or more. Below 100 Hz sound waves have been detected traveling at various depths in the earth's crust around the globe.