Autonomous Marine Seismic Data Acquisition

Whilst autonomous or “cable free” seismic recording is not a new technology, having been originally developed by Amoco in the 1970s, with the Seismic Group Recorder, its application offshore has been relatively recent. A number of surveys have been undertaken in the Gulf of Mexico, UKCS and offshore West Africa in deep water where the nodes, as the autonomous recording units are now referred to, are deployed and recovered using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). Recently FairfieldNodal have introduced a node based marine system which does not require the use of ROVs for node deployment and recovery. In this paper we will review both deep water and this new “shallow” water technology and show the improved productivity and enhanced operational performance that autonomous nodes can provide.