A paraboloidal sparker seismic source

A marine sparker seismic source is presented, in which the electrical discharges take place at the focus of a paraboloidal reflecting surface, in order to obtain a downward-oriented, approximately plane acoustic wavefront. This source, here compared with a traditional sparker-array configuration, gives higher penetration of sea bottom sediments and could be successfully employed in high resolution marine seismic reflection prospecting. -Authors