A Comparison of Multiple Attenuation Strategies for Shallow Water Ultra-High-Resolution (UHR) Seismic Reflection Data

Summary The processing and interpretation of Ultra High Resolution (UHR, > 2k Hz) marine seismic data can be very challenging, especially in shallow waters (< 50m depth), where multiple reflections can overprint primaries in areas of interest, potentially creating ambiguities in the interpretation. In this paper, we compared the performance of five different multiple attenuation techniques (τ-p deconvolution, f-k demultiple, Radon demultiple, Surface Related Multiple Elimination (SRME), and τ-p deconv + SRME) on a very-shallow water (<15m depth) multichannel UHR seismic dataset. In this case, techniques independent of the moveout differences between primaries and multiples (τ-p deconvolution and SRME) attenuated multiples effectively, producing minor changes on primaries and without significant addition of noise. In contrast, f-k demultiple, Radon demultiple and the combined application of τ-p deconvolution and SRME were inefficient at removing multiples. SRME was identified as the most efficient technique and allowed for a significant improvement in the interpretability of the final seismic image.