The transient impact of bubble washdown is generally the limiting factor restricting deep water multibeam surveys in marginal sea state conditions. Such events are linked to the vessel motion dynamics as well as the instantaneous sea surface relief, both of which are driven by the ocean wave periodicity. Deep water multibeam ping cycles typically encompass one or more wave periods and thus it is important to understand the relationship between the ping cycle and the bubble washdown event. We present a new method using sonar mode imaging with high frequency multibeam to investigate this relationship.