Geophysical and Biological Seafloor Mapping of Four Oil and Gas Lease Blocks in the South Atlantic Georgia Embayment

Hard bottom substrate and live bottom biota associated with four South Atlantic Georgia Embayment oil and gas lease blocks were evaluated and mapped using geophysical and biological techniques. The primary objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of standard geophysical equipment and techniques to identify and map hard bottom areas. Geophysically defined hard bottom areas were groundtruthed utilizing biological techniques to identify and map the associated live bottom biota. General hard bottom areas within the study area were geophysically mapped successfully through the conservative interpretation of side-scan sonar, subbottom profiler, and precision depth recorder data. However, visual inspection was necessary to delineate the discontinuous nature of the emergent hard bottom areas and to describe the associated live bottom biota.