Feasibility of a Marine Vibroseis System to Minimize Potential Impacts of Seismic Surveying on Commercial Marine Invertebrates

Marine vibroseis (a sound generating system that uses a large oscillating mass to emit a range of frequencies) offers an alternative to air-gun seismic sources and may have fewer environmental effects on marine biota. This project, built on the approach and findings of previous studies, constructed a hypothesis and designed (but did not conduct) experiments to establish if the potential impacts on commercial marine invertebrates species particularly snow crab, would be reduced by replacing the air-gun with a marine virbroseis source with lower peak intensity than the air-gun, but a longer pulse length. The project established specifications for a marine vibroseis source that could replace the air-gun and investigated the feasibility of using the Modular Projector System as a marine vibroseis source.