Not a buoy 'cause it has a bow and so is designed to be towed in one direction. Radar refelector and nice bright colour to be seen by human and machine. Going on your last pictures and that type of work...
Target practice for fishing boats? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
The seismic streamers vary in length according to the depth of imaging were looking at. Normally we are at 3 - 4 km target depth so the streamers have to be twice this length to pick up the far reflections - typically 7 kilometres long. We deploy up to 12 streamers, and the end of each is marked by a tailbuoy as pictured which has gps and a transmitter to send positions back to the ship. The streamers are normally at around 6m depth so invisible, but connected to the tailbuoys via wires and a chain bridle
It never ceased to amuse me when we turned the ship around through 180 degrees that we would meet the tailbuoys coming past us in the opposite direction some half an hour after we'd made the turn. Be warned if you see these around that they are doing 5 knots and connected to a ship 5 miles away!
We wouldn't get away with having our immersion suits undone these days!
I can remember the old days .... I used to get roped into Horizontal sextant angle the buoy of the arse-end of the boat ... took a bloo*y good eye-piece on the sextant to see the thing !!
One time of Louisiana coast .... CGG - not Western !! ..... wqe had a buoy line severed ... and of course seismic cable was then de-pressured and brought to surface .... ready to haul on. Mission Chief asked me to call the support tug to get our buoy ... I was very annoyed and told him straight - WE GET OUR BUOY ... not some bl***y yank !! So "dark-room" boys were told to keep an eye on the cable and we turned and ran off to collect our "stray" ...
Now there's me thinking we might get some thanks ... as Tome knows ... the older system had Mariners like me and techies who knew jack-s*** about driving a boat ... Did anyone say thanks .......... Next time call the support boat !!
Oh and our standard length was 3.2 nm long cable with 3 starjet stream arrays ... whatever you did with that behind .... you'd struggle to get over 5kn anyway !!
Tom, could you do a big write up on exactly what you do, and how you do it. I'm interested, and I'm sure others would be. I gained a lot of knowledge about GPS chatting with you on the forums, and there is lot of other stuff you know that won't come out without specific questions. So go for the blurb factor.