Patent ID: 8391101

Claim:
A method of acquiring seismic data in a marine environment, said method comprising: (a) towing a system of 4 to 50 laterally-spaced steerable seismic streamers through a body of water, wherein each of said seismic streamers has a front portion and a rear portion wherein the front portion of each streamer is laterally spaced from the front portions of other streamers in the system each streamer comprises a series of longitudinally-spaced marine seismic receivers characterized by: (b) simultaneously with step (a), steering said system of seismic streamers into a flared configuration where (i) all the streamers have a length of between 2 kilometers and 20 kilometers, (ii) the lateral distance between the outer-most, rearward-most marine seismic receivers at the rear portions of the streamers is at least 2 percent greater than the lateral distance between the outer-most, forward-most marine seismic receivers, (iii) the average spacing between adjacent seismic receivers of the rearward-most group of seismic receivers is in the range of 15 to 250 meters; (c) simultaneously with steps (a) and (b), recording reflected and/or refracted seismic data with said marine seismic receivers; and (d) towing the system of laterally-spaced seismic streamers in the flared configuration as described in step (b) through a survey area that is divided into a number of adjacent acquisition passes wherein gaps are avoided between adjacent passes in the seismic data collected by the marine seismic receivers.