Abstract: This paper describes potential applications of broadband acoustic signals for marine biology and fisheries and acoustic precise profiling of the upper layer of sediments. Comparisons of the results of conducted experiments employing the same experimental setup but with different signals are presented. In each of experiments short pulses of CW signals and long pulses of up/down chirp signals were used. The basic theory of FM signals as well as some of the factors that must be considered when implementing this type of signal in actual systems are described.