Volumetric, Multi-fold Acoustic Interrogations of Complex Sub-seabeds

For many marine applications in the offshore renewable energy and oil and gas industries, high resolution images of the shallow structures beneath the seabed are crucial for minimizing risks to infrastructure, personnel and investments. For both the emplacement and maintenance of piles and caissons for offshore wind turbines and oil platform supports, knowledge of drilling impediments like boulders and of the stratigraphic layering in which these supports are anchored can be invaluable to safe operations. We introduce a tandem approach of applying synthetic aperture sonar and high-resolution multi-fold seismic reflection techniques for obtaining such images in challenging marine site investigations.