A marine survey node can include a body to be deployed to a seabed, a marine survey receiver coupled to the body and to acquire marine survey data, and a soil sample module associated with the body to collect a soil sample from the seabed. A soil sample module can include a vessel, a first valve coupled to the vessel, and a spike coupled to the vessel. The spike can penetrate an earth surface. The first valve can maintain a pressure difference between the vessel and the spike when closed and equalize a pressure between the vessel and the spike when open. An inlet in the spike can equalize pressure between an inside of the spike and an outside of the spike and to collect a soil sample from the earth surface.

A method includes collecting spectral data from fiber Bragg grating sensors distributed at locations along a fiber optic component positioned along a streamer; and analyzing the spectral data to produce measurements of bend of an axis of the streamer proximate the locations. A streamer monitoring system includes: a fiber optic component positioned along a streamer; a plurality of fiber Bragg grating sensors distributed at locations along the fiber optic component; a light source optically coupled to the fiber optic component and configured to interrogate the fiber Bragg grating sensors; a photodetector optically coupled to the fiber optic component and configured to collect spectral data from the interrogated fiber Bragg grating sensors; and a spectral analyzer in communication with the photodetector and configured to analyze the spectral data to produce measurements of bend of an axis of the streamer proximate the locations along the fiber optic component.

Systems and methods for improving or generating an image of a surveyed subsurface based on seismic interferometry. A method includes actuating interferometry-based sources over an area to be surveyed to generate seismic waves; recording seismic signals due to the interferometry-based sources, with seismic receivers; selecting traces corresponding to a pair of seismic receivers and an interferometry-based source such that ray paths between the interferometry-based source and the pair of seismic receivers contribute to a Green's function between the two receivers of the pair; cross-correlating the traces for calculating an earth's response associated with a ray propagating from a first seismic receiver of the pair to a second receiver of the pair; and generating an image based on the calculated earth's response.

An efficient adaptive seismic data flow lossless compression and decompression method, which aims at solving the problem that data occupies the storage space and affects the transmission efficiency and is used for efficiently compressing geophysical instrument data, particularly seismic data after 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion. In the method, a data flow is compressed in a lossless mode in real time, and sampling data is adaptively compressed into 1 byte or 2 bytes or 3 bytes from original 24 bits and 3 bytes in a coding manner. Besides the foregoing data ranges, other integers that can be expressed by other 24-bit integer data with symbols are required to be expressed by 4 bytes after being operated through a compression algorithm. The method has the advantages of saving a large amount of storage space and remarkably increasing the data transmission efficiency.

A method of performing a seismic survey including: deploying nodal seismic sensors at positions in a survey region; activating a plurality of seismic sources; and using the nodal seismic sensors to record seismic signals generated in response to the activation of the plurality of signals.

A marine seismic exploration method and system comprised of continuous recording, self-contained ocean bottom pods characterized by low profile casings. An external bumper is provided to promote ocean bottom coupling and prevent fishing net entrapment. Pods are tethered together with flexible, non-rigid, non-conducting cable used to control pod deployment. Pods are deployed and retrieved from a boat deck configured to have a storage system and a handling system to attach pods to cable on-the-fly. The storage system is a juke box configuration of slots wherein individual pods are randomly stored in the slots to permit data extraction, charging, testing and synchronizing without opening the pods. A pod may include an inertial navigation system to determine ocean floor location and a rubidium clock for timing. The system includes mathematical gimballing. The cable may include shear couplings designed to automatically shear apart if a certain level of cable tension is reached.

In one aspect, a seismic data acquisition unit is disclosed including a closed housing containing: a seismic sensor; a processor operatively coupled to the seismic sensor; a memory operatively coupled to the processor to record seismic data from the sensor; and a power source configured to power the sensor, processor and memory. The sensor, processor, memory and power source are configured to be assemble as an operable unit in the absence of the closed housing.

Method for acquiring, at reduced acquisition cost, seismic data using simultaneous, field-encoded sources in the field (702), and then constructing pseudo source-records (703) that better meet the requirements for using additional simultaneous computer-encoded sourcing for computer simulations or forward modeling (706) as part of (707) iterative FWI (Full Wavefield Inversion) or RTM (Reverse Time Migration), with additional reduction in computational costs. By better meeting the requirements of simultaneous sourcing for FWI or RTM (701), artifacts and crosstalk are reduced in the output. The method can be used for marine streamer acquisition and other non-fixed spread geometries to acquire both positive and negative offsets and to mitigate the “missing data” problem for simultaneous-source FWI. It can also be used for land data to overcome issues with moving spreads and long continuous records.

Systems, methods, and apparatuses related to automatically and simultaneously charging a plurality of autonomous seismic nodes on a marine vessel before and/or after deployment to the seabed are disclosed. A plurality of autonomous seismic nodes are simultaneously charged in a CSC approved ISO container. Each autonomous seismic node may comprise a plurality of power connectors, a plurality of rechargeable batteries, and a battery management system. Each of the nodes may be configured to couple with a charging system on the marine vessel, which may include a power source, one or more power/charging stations, one or more power connectors, and a network. The node may have a plurality of power connectors disposed within a plurality of grooves that are configured to couple with a plurality of charging rails for simultaneous charging.

A method for hydrocarbon exploration based on imaging tunnel valleys is disclosed. The method includes obtaining a 3D seismic volume data corresponding to a target formation having at least one tunnel valley, interpreting a key horizon at or above the target formation as preparation for paleo-depositional environment restoration, flattening and decimating the 3D seismic volume data using the key horizon for paleo-depositional environment restoration to obtain a conditioned 3D seismic volume data, analyzing the conditioned 3D seismic volume data for frequency content and decomposing the conditioned 3D seismic volume data into at least three attributes, blending the at least three attributes to form a single seismic volume data to illuminate key features, and displaying, on a map, a distribution of the tunnel valleys in the 3D seismic volume data of the target formation.