Bob A. Hardage, principal investigator; Milo M. Backus, Robert J. Graebner, Paul E. Murray,
Randy L. Remington, and Diana C. Sava
The Exploration Geophysics Laboratory (EGL) is a subcontractor to Louisiana State University
in this study. Research is funded by the U.S. Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service. The study will
investigate several seafloor fluid-gas expulsion sites in the deep-water area of Green Canyon in the northern Gulf
of Mexico. Sites will be selected that are traversed by one or more of WesternGeco's deep-water, multiclient, 4-C
OBC seismic lines. Multifrequency imaging of gas-hydrate systems associated with these expulsion chimneys will be
done by acquiring 2- to 16-kHz chirp-sonar data using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and 500- to 2,000-Hz
data with the Naval Research Laboratory Deep-Towed Acoustic/Geophysics System (DTAGS). These AUV and DTAGS images
will then be compared with 4-C OBC images along each profile that is analyzed. |