Monitoring of the water column and subbottom sediments using acoustic arrays in the northern Gulf of Mexico

A program has been initiated to install a system of acoustic arrays and other sensors on the continental slope of the northern Gulf of Mexico. Both vertical arrays in the water column and horizontal arrays on the seafloor will be deployed. The site environment will be calibrated using known sound sources to establish the distribution of the sound speed in the water and sediment columns. During routine operations the arrays would depend on passing ships as their primary sources of sound. Since the area of interest is subject to frequent ship traffic, a near-constant stream of data is anticipated. Inversion of that data would then provide a more-or-less continuous monitoring of changes of oceanographic and geologic acoustic parameters with time. Although the system will be of potential use in various types of studies, its first deployment will be in the vicinity of known gas-hydrate outcrops to observe the effect of short-term changes of wafer temperature on episodes of hydrate disassociation and related seafloor instability