Practical geological comparison of some seafloor survey instruments

Seafloor survey instruments are integral to the study of marine geology. Because understanding their resolution and limitations is critical, we compare how different survey systems represent the seafloor. Coincident data collected at the Galapagos propagator (GLORIA, SeaMARC II, Sea Beam, Deep‐Tow, camera sled, and Alvin) allow comparisons of how well seafloor features (e.g., faults and volcanoes) observed and characterized in high resolution data are represented in lower resolution, coarser‐scale data sets. Our reported values for the minimum sizes of detected and well‐represented features show that practical geological resolutions are generally ∼2‐10 times lower than theoretical resolutions; care must be taken in evaluating which system to use to address a particular problem.