WATER REVERBERATIONS—THEIR NATURE AND ELIMINATION

Abstract

In offshore shooting the validity of previously recorded seismic data has been severely limited by multiple reflections within the water layer. The magnitude of this problem is dependent on the thickness and the nature of the boundaries of the water layer. The effect of the water layer is treated as a linear filtering mechanism, and it is suggested that most apparent water reverberation records probably contain some approximate subsurface structural information, even in their present form. The use of inverse filtering techniques for the removal or attenuation of the water reverberation effect is discussed. Examples show the application of the technique to conventional magnetically recorded offshore data. It has been found that the effectiveness of the method is strongly dependent on the instrumental parameters used in the recording of the original data.