Recording Earthquakes on the Sea Floor

Roland Piquepaille writes "The vast majority of the earthquakes are located underneath the oceans where they are not recorded because of a lack of instruments. This is why the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has developed a new kind of ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs) to record both small and large earthquakes on the sea floor. Forty of them will be deployed at the beginning of 2007 in an area of the Eastern Pacific Ocean known to have large earthquakes. One goal of this one-year mission is to better understand earthquake processes, but this technology could soon be used to better monitor other parts of the oceans. Read more for additional details and pictures about this new technology."

Comments

Stupid Question

[Eightyford]

This is probably a stupid question, but could all of the undersea listening posts that were put in the ocean (to detect nuclear subs) during the cold war be used to detect earthquakes?

Re:Stupid Question

[SEWilco]

Why are you asking us? A Google search based on the term you used, "undersea listening post earthquakes", and someone else's terminology "naval listening post earthquakes" finds several results which indicate it has been used for that. More precise is "SOSUS earthquakes".