Looking ahead to the future of marine reflection seismology

Marine geophysical data acquired aboard research vessels operated by academic institutions were critical in fomenting the plate tectonic revolution in Earth science over a generation ago. In the past 15 years, however, the gap between academic and industrial marine geophysical data acquisition and processing, especially seismic, has widened. In the United States, this perhaps reflects the fact that funding for academic ocean science research has fallen from 7% to less than