Directional hydrophones on naval vessels are often limited in listening performance by acoustic interference arising from discrete sources such as propellers, pumps, or discharges. While a directional hydrophone may achieve some discrimination against such sources, the effectiveness of this discrimination is limited by the minor‐lobe response in the direction of the source of interference. In an ideally homogeneous, unbounded medium, the minor‐lobe characteristics of a directional hydrophone would be determined completely by the characteristics of the hydrophone and any associated baffle structure. In the ocean, however, backscattering from various discontinuities contributes significantly to thein situminor‐lobe structure. One type of practical discontinuity in the ocean is that caused by volume scatterers. It is of interest to examine theoretically the seriousness of volume scattering as a contribution to minor‐lobe level, since it would appear to impose a practical limit to what can be achieved by minor‐lobe‐suppression techniques in hydrophone design. Quantitative deductions concerning this phenomenon may be made regarding the effects of such factors as volume‐scattering coefficient, direction of source, distance to source, directivity index of hydrophone, and attenuation constant of the medium.