We measured in the laboratory compressional wave velocity and electrical resistivity on 434 sediment samples collected from the Yellow Sea to study the joint elastic-electrical properties of marine sediments. Porosity was found to reduce both elastic velocity and electrical resistivity of the marine sediments in a non-linear fashion; velocity showed an approximate linear increase with increasing logarithm of resistivity. Various effective medium models either implemented or developed were compared with the new dataset. The model results showed that the combined self-consistent approximation and differential effective medium model using critical porosity of 0.6 and 0.5 for velocity and resistivity respectively gave a reasonable description of the joint elastic-electrical behaviors of the marine sediments. The joint elastic-electrical properties of the marine sediments established would be used to estimate resistivity from measured velocity and vice versa, and could also be suitable for detection of gas hydrate or other suitable targets from joint seismic-resistivity surveys. joint elastic-electrical properties, marine sediments, Yellow Sea, effective medium models Marine sediments on the shallow surface of seafloor are an important interface between sea water and the rocks beneath in terms of their transitional physical properties. The acoustic properties (mainly sound speed and attenuation) of marine sediments are key factors that affect sound spatial structure, underwater sound communication, underwater objection locating, and underwater sonar performance, and are therefore being significant research topics of military oceanography and military geophysics that play an important role in national coast defenses [1,2]. On the other hand, the measurements of electrical properties (e.g. electrical resistivity or its inverse electrical conductivity) of marine sediments provide valuable information for marine engineering [3] and resource [4,5] investigations and seafloor environmental monitoring [6].Recent development in in-situ seafloor sediments acoustic equipment [1,7] and the controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM) techniques [8] has made the accurate joint elastic-electrical measurements of marine sediments possible, which can give a better evaluation of the sedimentological properties (e.g. porosity and brine or gas content) provided that the inter-relationships among sediment engineering and the joint elastic-electrical properties of marine sediments are known. There has been joint elastic-electrical research on sedimentary rocks (e.g. reservoir sandstones) [9, 10], but unfortunately none relevant work on marine sediments can be found in the open literature.We aim in this paper to establish the relationship between compressional wave velocity (V p ) and electrical resistivity ( ) of marine sediments (referred to as the joint elastic-electrical properties) based on comprehensive laboratory