A case study: imaging OBS multiples of South China Sea

The subseafloor structure offshore South China Sea was imaged using first-order water-layer multiples from ocean-bottom seismometer data and the results were compared to conventional imaging using primary reflections. The mirror-imaging method employs a primaries-only reverse time pre-stack depth migration algorithm to image the receiver ghosts. The additional travel path of the multiples through the water layer is accounted for by a simple manipulation of the velocity model and processing datum: the receivers lie not on the sea floor but on a sea surface twice as high as the true water column. Migration results show that the multiple-migrated image provides a much broader illumination of the subsurface than the conventional image using the primaries, especially for the very shallow reflections. The resulting image from mirror imaging has illumination comparable to the vertical incidence surface streamer (single-channel) reflection data.