Tiakina Te Moana

Impacts of Seismic Surveys on Marine Mammals and Fish

What are seismic surveys?

Seismic surveys are used by the offshore oil and gas industry to help determine the location of oil and gas

deposits beneath the seafloor. These surveys utilize large, specialized ships which tow an array of powerful

air guns that generate sound waves by firing off explosive...

Prospecting for oil and gas using exploration seismology, a geophysical method of determining geologic structure by means of prospector-induced elastic waves. By studying body waves such as compressional and shear waves propagating through the Earth's interior, the constituent and elastic properties of its solid and liquid core, its solid mantle, and its thin crust are defined. The major differences between earthquake seismology and petroleum exploration seismology a...

History

Underwater sound has probably been used by marine animals for millions of years. The science of underwater acoustics began in 1490, when Leonardo Da Vinci wrote,[1]

"If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you."

In 1687 Isaac Newton wrote his Mathematical Princi...