Continuous Shooting, Recording and Imaging of seismic data

This project will develop a new method of acquiring and processing marine seismic data. Today several air pressure sources are used simultaneously to create one large impulsive wave. The echo of this sound is recorded by microphones that are towed behind a vessel. The recorded data is analyzed and used to generate a map of the geology from the sea surface and down to 10 - 15 kilometers into the earth. The new method we will test will be using a low level continuous humming as sound source instead of an impulsive sound. This humming will be generated by air pressure sources that are triggered continuously as the vessel is moving, instead of all firing at the same time. Advanced algorithms need to be developed specifically to generate the geological map of the subsurface based on the recording of the reflected humming. We believe that this method will generate less noise in the sea and better seismic data at less cost than today's methods.

The project has proven that we can acquire seismic data with lower noise emissions. It is also shown that higher sampling is possible. Work will continue to further improve the data quality, reduce the noise emissions and look into efficiency gains during the acquisition of seismic data.