Surface Marine All Azimuth Recording Technique

A-02 SURFACE MARINE ALL AZIMUTH RECORDING TECHNIQUE Summary 1 The SMAART JV 1 created a 3D earth model to investigated target illumination representative of sub-salt plays in the Gulf of Mexico. Ray tracing on this model reveals that conventional towed streamer acquisition would leave a substantial illumination hole at the target horizon. No one streamer orientation is sufficient to illuminate this area. However the width of the illumination hole was substantially reduced if all-azimuth areal shot record geometries such as Vertical Cable or OBC were used. We present a novel multi-azimuth acquisition method capable of reducing the illumination hole below