Geissler, Wolfram H; Schmidt-Aursch, Mechita; Matias, Luis; Embriaco, Davide; Corela, Carlos; Favali, Paolo; Zitellini, Nevio; Jokat, Wilfried (2025): Project NEAREST: DEPAS ocean-bottom seismometer operations in the Gulf of Cadiz in 2007-2008 [dataset]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.983719

The NEARESTproject (Integrated observations from NEAR shore sourcES of Tsunamis: towards an early warning system) aimed at the identification and characterization of potential near-shore sources of tsunamis in the Gulf of Cadiz. This area is well known from the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Lisbon and several other places mainly along the EastAtlantic coast on November 1st, 1755. One of the project's work packages dealed with monitoring of recent seismic activity in the Gulf of Cadiz area. For this purpose 24 broadband ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) from the German DEPAS instrument pool were deployed for 11 months in addition to the GEOSTAR multi-parameter deep-sea observatory and temporary land stations in Portugal. The GEOSTAR observatory and the 24 OBS were deployed and recovered during two expeditions with RV Urania in 2007 and 2008. The OBSs consist of three‐component Guralp CMG‐40T‐OBS seismometers and HighTech HTI‐04‐PCA/ULF hydrophones. A wide range of signals was recorded, including teleseismic, regional and local earthquakes, and low‐frequency (∼20 Hz) vocalization of fin whales. The GEOSTAR observatory was again deployed between 2009 and 2011. The Portuguese temporary land station PDRG was additionally recording during the NEAREST project. Originally, the position of recovery on deck was taken to calculate the mean coordinate of the OBS at depth from deployment and recovery coordinates. In most cases the difference in coordinates between deployment and recovery is very small (table 3 and 4 in Carrara et al., 2008). For two stations, the location at the seafloor could be measured by triangulation (Carrara et al., 2008). Due to experience of other experiments over the years, we finally suggest to use the deployment coordinates as the station coordinates for all stations that could not be tri-angulated. The clocks were synchronized with GPS time before the deployment and if possible again after the recovery. Unfortunately, most of the batteries were empty at the end of the recording period. That either made it impossible to realize the second synchronisation (skew time measurement) or in some case also caused erroneous synchronisations. Therefore, the internal clock drift was estimated by ambient noise analysis (Corela, 2014). The internal clock drifts were corrected using a linear interpolation method. Generally, the data quality is very good, especially for the intended study of local and regional earthquakes. Studies relying on wideband seismological recordings can also be carried out. The sensor package and noise conditions hamper the use for broadband and very broadband applications. Unfortunately, also not all channels operated properly, therefore hampering the use of multi-component methods for the relevant stations. We thank the captain E. Gentile, crew, G. Carrara, and all participants of the R/V URANIA expeditions in 2007 and 2008. We are grateful to all people and institutions involved in the NEAREST project.