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Recording Earthquakes on the Sea Floor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hold-your-breath dept.

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."

7 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Tsunamis by Life700MB · · Score: 2, Informative


    Earthquakes at the bottom of the ocean are known to generate devastating tsunamis, as the Indian Ocean one on 2004.


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  2. It should not matter where the sensors are located by keilinw · · Score: 2, Informative

    I may be incorrect, but I believe that it is possible to detect seisemic activity from anywhere on the planet provided that the sensors are sensitive enough. With this in mind, detection is one thing, but actually interpreting the data as well as doing something useful with it is another thing. Geolocation with sensitive instruments requires MASSIVE amounts of computational power as well as a very good model of the Earth's transmittance dynamics. technologies which I'm sure certain governments are quite skilled at.

    On the other hand, a massive distributed sensor network would be quite useful as it would be more sensitive and would be able to geo-locate w/o the use of supercomputers!

    Matthew Wong http://www.themindofmatthew.com

  3. Only half the problem... by gasmonso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Detecting the earthquake is only half the problem. As with the tsunami in 2004, the earthquake was detected, but there were no solid procedures in place to take action with the data. The information went unused for the most part as researchers were unsure who to call or what to do. Quite sad.

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
  4. Scientists know by Himring · · Score: 3, Funny

    Good article. This technology should prove useful as we seek to understand the mysterious forces behind plate techtonics. However, scientists claim publicly to need more understanding of earthquakes. Privately, they know they are caused, in large part, by Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks....

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  5. Stupid Question by Eightyford · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Stupid Question by SEWilco · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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".

  6. I wrote the code by certsoft · · Score: 4, Informative
    for the DSP based data acquisition system housed in that orange box shown at http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=5748&a id=2509

    It's a Kinemetrics/Quanterra model Q330. There is a PC-104 based single board computer that records data to hard disk located in another sphere.