Mitigation of noise in marine multicomponent seismic data through the relationship between wavefield components at the free surface

A method for mitigating noise in seismic data comprising:

• acquiring a set of multicomponent seismic data in a marine survey;
• and
• on a computer, removing a noise component in the seismic data determined from the relationship of the decomposed upgoing and downgoing components at the free surface, wherein the noise is any information that does not obey the acoustic equation of motion.

A apparatus, comprising:

• a marine survey system capable of acquiring multicomponent seismic data;
• and
• a computing apparatus programmed to remove noise component in the seismic data determined from the relationship at the free surface of an upgoing component and a downgoing component decomposed from the recorded wavefield, wherein the noise is any information that does not obey the acoustic equation of motion.