On July 2, we finished deploying over twenty ocean-bottom seismometers as a part of our marine expedition to study a major tectonic boundary offshore Alaska. Ocean bottom seismometers (OBS’s) are autonomous instruments that sit on the seafloor and record sound waves traveling through the earth and the water. Floats made from glass balls and syntactic foam make each OBS buoyant, but an anchor holds it on the seafloor during the study. We communicate with each OBS acoustically, allowing us to send it a command to release from its anchor when we are ready to recover it.
For our project, we are placing OBS’s from Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the seafloor along two lines that span the major offshore fault zone. Immediately prior to deployment, we assemble the main components of each OBS on deck while the ship transits between sites. When we arrive at the deployment site, the ship slows down, and the OBS is lifted over the side of the vessel and into the water with a large crane. We release it, and it sinks to the sea floor. Thanks to the skill and hard work of the Scripps OBS team and the ship’s crew, we were able to deploy one OBS every hour, which is very efficient!
The larger the distance between the sound source (earthquakes or air guns) and the seismometer, the deeper into the earth the recorded sound waves travel. OBS are very sensitive and not attached to the vessel, so they can record sound waves generated very far away by earthquakes or air guns (commonly >200 km). Because we want to examine deep fault zones that cause large earthquakes off Alaska, OBS are a critical part of our effort.
In a few days, after we steam back over the OBS’s generating sound waves with our air guns, we will return to retrieve them. Even after ten years of working with ocean-bottom seismometers, it never ceases to amaze me that we can throw a bundle of very sophisticated electronics over the side of the ship and hope to pick it up and retrieve useful information from it. We are very excited about the new insights that will be provided by the data recorded on these instruments…
Thank you for all these informations!
I don’t read ( and write!)very well american but I understand some passages!
Good trip! Fine discovery!
Matthias’s mother!
[…] completion of the first phase of our project and embarked on the second. Part 1 involved deploying ocean bottom seismometers and recording air-gun-generated sound waves. We successfully retrieved all of the OBS’s, and the […]