Patent ID: 8588025

Claim:
A method, comprising: deploying a towed array, marine seismic spread, the spread including: a plurality of streamer arrays; a plurality of streamer vessels, each streamer vessel towing a respective one of the streamer arrays; and a plurality of source vessels, each source vessel towing one or more seismic sources from a plurality of seismic sources; traversing the deployed spread across a survey area such that the sail lines of vessels on the leading edge of the deployed spread are interleaved with the sail lines of vessels on the trailing edge of the deployed spread; shooting one or more combinations of seismic sources from the plurality of seismic sources according to a source crossline separation interval, wherein the seismic sources in at least one of the combinations are separated by the crossline separation interval and wherein the crossline separation interval is used to separate data attributable to the seismic sources in the at least one of the combinations; and acquiring wide azimuth survey data during the traversal.