Study of Imaging of Submarine Bubble Plume with Reverse Time Migration

Various sources, such as wind, waves, ships, and gas leaks from the seafloor, forms bubbles in the ocean. Underwater bubbles cause signal scattering, considerably affecting acoustic measurements. This characteristic of bubbles is used to block underwater noise by attenuating the intensity of the propagated signal. Recently, researchers have been studying the large-scale release of methane gas as bubble plumes from the seabed. Understanding the physical properties and distribution of bubble plumes is crucial for studying the relation between leaked methane gas and climate change. Therefore, a water tank experiment was conducted to estimate the distribution of bubble plumes using seismic imaging techniques and acoustic signals obtained from artificially generated bubbles using a bubble generator. Reverse time migration was applied to image the bubble plumes while the acquired acoustic envelope signal was used to effectively estimate bubble distribution. Imaging results were compared with optical camera images to verify the estimated bubble distribution. The water tank experiment confirmed that the proposed system could successfully image the distribution of bubble plumes using reverse time migration and the envelope signal. The experiment showed that the scattering signal of artificial bubble plumes can be used for seismic imaging.