The advanced triaxial, broadband ocean bottom system is fully operational at ±90 °, making it ideal for free-fall deployment onto the sea floor. The compact size of the unit makes it suitable for smaller deployment vessels.

Transfer state-of-health parameters and noise performance plots from the
seabed, select the desired response of the sensor and measure the time offset of the digitiser.

Transmit seismic waveforms and STA/LTA triggered event data to a receiver located at the surface in near-real-time for alert applications.

Achieve up to 9000 bps data transmission between the surface and the Aquarius on the seafloor.

In addition to the seismometer, Aquarius is fitted with an absolute pressure gauge (APG) and a hydrophone.

The APG has an accuracy of 0.25% of full scale and is used to activate the recovery aids when the system is approaching the surface. If desired, an additional high performance APG, essential for tsunami detection, can be incorporated.

The standard hydrophone has a frequency response of 2 Hz - 30 kHz, with the option to upgrade to an ultra-low frequency version of 100 s (0.01 Hz) to 8 kHz.

The advanced Aquarius recovery system is initialised either via acoustic link, a pre-programmed time-out or, optional critical level battery trigger.

Once activated, a burn-wire system releases the ballast and the syntactic foam around the aluminium pressure vessel brings the instrument to the surface.

A satellite tracking system monitors the instrument on the sea surface with messages from the tracking system viewable in the Discovery instrument configuration software or automatically sent by e-mail or text message.

Once tracking information is received and the recovery boat is deployed, a Discovery acoustic localisation tool calculates the slant range between the OBS and the recovery boat as it nears the expected location. To aid night recoveries, the OBS also has a strobe LED light.