Weather and the 3-microbar limit on the North-West European Continental Shelf

Interference of simultaneously shooting seismic vessels has been discussed quite frequently of late but the weather, which also has a profound effect on the acquisition of marine seismie data, has received little attention. In this paper, I will discuss its effects in the context of the North-West European Continental Shelf as delineated in Fig. 1, from the following viewpoints: (a) Introduction (b) Weather on the North-West European Continental Shelf and the difficulties of associating wind and wave. (c) A marine seismic experiment relating wind and seismic data quality. (d) A discussion of weather statistics and the amount of 'down-time' which results trom application of the 3-microbar limit and which would result from a lessening of this restriction in accordance with the results of (c).