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An investigation of seawater and sediment depth using a prototype airborne electromagnetic instrumentation system – a case study in Broken Bay, Australia

Previous studies using commercial airborne electromagnetic equipment that is not optimized for marine surveying have demonstrated the use of airborne electromagnetic methods for measuring water depth and estimating sediment thickness. A new prototype helicopter time‐domain airborne electromagnetic system, SeaTEM(0), is now under development for bathymetric surveying. The first sea trial of the SeaTEM(0) system took place over Broken Bay, New South Wales, Australia, in shallow water up to ∼30 m in depth. Broken Bay was chosen because the separate paleodrainage systems for the Hawkesbury River, Brisbane Water and Pittwater, which join in Broken Bay give rise to paleovalleys infilled with unconsolidated sediments, ranging in thickness between 0 m (bedrock outcrop) and ∼200 m. The survey area also included a tombolo with a beach either side, which provided the opportunity to measure water depth through a surf zone. Sediment thickness and water depth is predicted from stitched layered‐earth inversion of data based on a simplified two‐layer model that represents seawater and sediment overlying a resistive half‐space basement (bedrock). The resulting bathymetric profiles show agreement typically to within ∼±1 m and ∼±0.5 m with known water depths in areas less than 20 and 6 m deep respectively. The inverted depth profile of the second (sediment) layer is noisy; however, the profiles reveal coarse topographic features of paleovalleys to depth limits of ∼60 to 80 m below sea level in 20 to 30 m water depth, as well as resolving bedrock ridges and exposed reefs in shallow waters.