Geophysical Surveying and Mapping Services (U.S., NAICS 541360)

A Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors.

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1. Overview

Geophysical surveying and mapping is the business of "seeing" underground and undersea without digging. Firms in this industry send energy into the earth — sound waves, magnetic and electromagnetic fields, gravity and radioactivity measurements — and read what bounces back to map rock layers, fluids and structures below the surface. The output is information that reduces the risk of a large capital decision: where to drill, where to route a cable or tunnel, where to store carbon, where a mineral deposit might sit. The classic customer is an oil and gas explorer sizing up a prospect before spending tens of millions on a well; newer customers include offshore-wind developers, carbon-storage projects, mineral explorers, infrastructure engineers and government mapping agencies.

Why it matters to an investor: this is a small, highly cyclical, technically deep service niche that sits upstream of much larger capital budgets. When exploration and development spending swells, survey firms boom; when budgets are cut, surveys are among the first lines slashed, and the industry has repeatedly gone through waves of bankruptcy and consolidation. That volatility creates both value traps and deep-cyclical opportunities.

Ways in differ by segment, and they are unusual. There is no large, liquid U.S.-listed pure-play. Public exposure is thin and mostly foreign-listed (the marine-seismic and data-library majors trade in Oslo, Paris and Amsterdam), plus a U.S. micro-cap onshore contractor and a small-cap instrument maker. Most domestic activity — onshore survey crews, airborne-survey firms, geotechnical and mapping shops — is privately held and small, which is where direct owners and private-equity roll-ups operate. The central question in any deal is whether a company owns differentiated data and customer relationships, or is mainly renting out mobile crews and equipment into a cyclical bidding market.

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2. What it is, and how it's structured

Scope (what NAICS 541360 covers). NAICS (the North American Industry Classification System) is the federal statistical scheme for industries. The U.S. Census Bureau defines code 541360 as establishments primarily engaged in gathering, interpreting and mapping geophysical data — locating and measuring subsurface resources such as oil, gas and minerals, and surveying for engineering purposes. Techniques include seismic, magnetic, gravity, electrical and electromagnetic (EM), radioactive/radiometric, and remote-sensing surveys, plus aerial geophysical surveying and geophysical mapping.[1]

A typical project runs through four steps: (1) field acquisition using crews, vessels, aircraft, vehicles and sensors; (2) data processing and quality control; (3) geological/geophysical interpretation; and (4) delivery of maps, models, raw data, reports or licensed datasets. The work therefore splits into a few distinct businesses:

• Data acquisition — the field work. Onshore ("land") crews lay out sensors and use vibrator trucks or small charges; offshore vessels tow "streamers" (long cables of hydrophones) or drop ocean-bottom nodes (OBN) on the seafloor; aircraft fly magnetic, radiometric and EM sensors over the ground.
• Data processing and imaging — turning raw signals into 3-D subsurface images using heavy high-performance computing (HPC) and proprietary algorithms.
• Multi-client data libraries — surveys shot "on spec" and licensed non-exclusively to many customers over years (more in §5).
• Instruments and sensors — the geophones, nodes and recording systems the crews use (partly a manufacturing business).

The end markets served span oil-and-gas exploration and development; mineral and critical-mineral exploration; offshore-wind, cable and seabed site characterization; carbon capture and storage, geothermal and underground storage; transportation, utilities, water, tunnels and foundations; and defense, environmental and public-resource programs.

What it EXCLUDES. This boundary is important. Ordinary land surveying, cadastral (property-line) surveying, topographic and cartographic work, and most GIS (geographic information system) mapping sit in the separate code NAICS 541370, Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services — the much larger "mapping" industry. Contract core-sampling, test-well drilling and other mine-development work (other than the geophysical survey itself) fall in NAICS 21311, Support Activities for Mining; contract drilling and oil-field services that exclude geophysical surveying fall in NAICS 213111/213112, Support Activities for Oil and Gas Operations; and broad engineering, environmental consulting and pipeline inspection generally land in NAICS 541330, 541620 or 541990.[1] So 541360 is a narrow, physics-heavy slice — not general mapping. Because a single project can bundle geophysical, geotechnical, engineering and environmental work, and classification follows an establishment's primary activity, company-level revenue rarely maps cleanly onto this code.

Ownership mix. Domestically the industry is a barbell: a long tail of small, closely held onshore crews, airborne-survey firms and consultancies, and at the top a handful of technology-and-capital-heavy majors — most of which are foreign-domiciled (Norwegian, French, Dutch). Public companies, family-owned and employee-owned engineering firms, private-equity-backed platforms, independent specialists, and government agencies producing work in-house are all present. The federal data contain no quantitative ownership split.

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3. How big it is

Federal business statistics show a small, fragmented U.S. industry. The figures below are Histometrics' ingested ground-truth federal data. They come from different programs and reference years, so treat them as related readings, not one unified financial statement.

Two features stand out. First, pay is high — roughly $109,000 per employee on average (annual payroll ÷ employees)[2] — consistent with a workforce of geophysicists, data processors and specialized field technicians. Second, the industry is statistically unconcentrated: the four largest firms took only 20.8% of receipts and the top 50 took 67.8%, with an HHI (the standard concentration index; regulators treat 1,500+ as "concentrated") of just 213.9.[2] That points to a long tail of smaller firms rather than control by a few listed companies.

The undercount caveat — read this before trusting the $1.5 billion. The $1.53 billion is best read as reported receipts of U.S. employer firms, not as total U.S. demand for subsurface intelligence. It understates the real footprint for several reasons:

1. Coverage gaps by construction. The Economic Census excludes nonemployer businesses (solo operators), and County Business Patterns covers employer establishments while excluding most government employees. So the figures miss solo contractors and all work performed inside government agencies — and the federal sources give no estimate of the missing amount.[4]
2. The majors are foreign. The firms that actually shoot and license most of the seismic data consumed in the U.S. market — TGS (Norway), Viridien/CGG (France), Fugro (Netherlands), Shearwater (Norway) — are foreign-domiciled, and much of the data is acquired offshore or overseas, so their receipts sit largely outside the U.S. count.
3. Boundary leakage. Contract seismic acquisition for oil and gas can be classified under NAICS 213112 (oilfield support) rather than 541360[1], moving a chunk of "geophysics" spending into a different bucket.
4. Domestically fragmented, globally concentrated. The low HHI reflects the U.S. tail of small onshore and mapping operators. The global marine-seismic and data-library business is an oligopoly of a few players. For context, third-party researchers estimate the global geophysical-services market at roughly $16.6 billion in 2025[24] — more than ten times the U.S. Census receipts figure (that estimate is a private forecast, not federal data).

Net: treat $1.53 billion as the U.S.-domiciled, employer-firm slice of a much larger, globally organized activity.

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4. The investable universe

There is no large U.S.-listed pure-play. The cleanest direct exposures are foreign-listed data/marine majors plus two U.S. small-caps; treat every listed name below as an exposure vehicle, not a one-for-one proxy for U.S. 541360.

Adjacent / diversified, not in-scope. The oilfield major SLB (NYSE: SLB) kept seismic data processing, imaging and its multi-client library but exited field acquisition in 2018[13] — geophysics is now a tiny slice of it. On the mapping side, the former NV5 Global (LiDAR — light detection and ranging — remote sensing and GIS) is no longer a standalone ticker: it merged into Acuren in August 2025, which renamed itself TIC Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: TIC) — geospatial is now one part of a much broader testing/inspection/engineering business.[25] Tetra Tech (Nasdaq: TTEK) offers broad water, environmental and infrastructure exposure (it absorbed RPS Group in 2023)[26], and Hexagon and Trimble supply geospatial hardware/software. All of these are largely NAICS 541370 / broad-engineering — related, not pure 541360 plays, and their 541360 revenue is not separately disclosed.

Private / other owners. Most of the domestic industry lives here. Beyond Shearwater, it includes independent onshore crews; specialist airborne-survey contractors that fly magnetic/radiometric/EM surveys (a natural fit for government critical-minerals work, §7); and large employee- or family-owned engineering-and-geospatial platforms whose near-surface geophysics sits inside a broader business — for example Terracon (100% employee-owned geotechnical/near-surface geophysics)[27], Woolpert (geospatial, acquisition-led)[27], Dewberry (family-owned engineering/mapping/geospatial)[27] and HNTB (employee-owned infrastructure/geospatial)[27] — plus private-equity platforms such as Kleinfelder (backed by Lindsay Goldberg)[28]. With the SBA (Small Business Administration) small-business threshold at $28.5m of receipts[3], the domestic industry is overwhelmingly small businesses — direct-ownership and roll-up territory rather than public equity.

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5. How the money works

Owners make money three different ways, and the metrics differ for each.

(a) Contract / proprietary acquisition — a utilization business. The firm owns the crews, vessels, aircraft and instruments and is paid a day-rate or turnkey per-project fee to shoot data the client owns exclusively (contracts may be fixed-price, time-and-materials, or priced by phase). Economics are driven by:

• Crew / vessel utilization — the single most important lever. Idle capital (a seismic vessel, an OBN spread, thousands of land "channels") bleeds cash; Dawson, for example, frames its outlook around keeping crews "highly utilized" and reports backlog as a forward indicator (its late-2025 backlog ran above 150% of the prior-year period).[6]
• Pricing / day-rates — thin in gluts, fat when capacity is tight — plus field productivity, weather, equipment uptime and change orders.
• Capital intensity — vessels, nodes and channels are expensive; capex and equipment cycles matter (Dawson set a ~$6m 2025 capital budget and is adding single-node channels as demand improved).[5][6]

(b) Multi-client data libraries — a data-royalty business. Instead of shooting to order, the firm invests its own capital to acquire data "on spec," then licenses the same dataset non-exclusively to many customers for years. This can earn attractive returns on a successful library, but it exposes the firm to upfront capital, uncertain sales timing and impairment risk. The economics hinge on:

• Prefunding ratio — how much of the survey cost customers commit up front before the boat sails. Higher prefunding de-risks the outlay; after the last downturn contractors insisted on more prefunding before starting projects.[16]
• Late sales — high-margin licenses of an already-shot dataset years later. These recover cost and drive returns, but "working below cost cannot continue endlessly," and weak markets force write-downs of library book value.[16]
• Sales-to-investment / amortization — the library is a capitalized asset amortized over its useful life; a "sales-to-investment" multiple measures how much license revenue each dollar of survey investment throws off. TGS reported roughly 2x on its multi-client business (≈2.2x in 2024, ≈2.0x in 2025).[9]

(c) Processing, interpretation, software and monitoring — and instruments. Data services (imaging, interpretation, monitoring) are less vessel-intensive and generate better repeat business when embedded in a customer's workflow, but depend on scarce technical labor and good underlying data. Instruments (Sercel, Geospace) are a manufacturing model: product cycles, order backlog and aftermarket node/sensor sales, increasingly tied to the shift from towed streamers to nodes.[10][12]

Beyond utilization and prefunding, the operating metrics that matter across all three models are backlog and book-to-bill, field gross margins, cash conversion and working capital, capex/equipment replacement, data-library amortization and impairment, customer/basin/end-market concentration, and technical-staff retention. Federal statistics provide none of these for this code — no utilization, backlog, margin, capex, or private-versus-government revenue split.

The cyclicality that defines the group. Survey revenue is a derivative of upstream exploration and production (E&P) capital spending — and exploration is the most discretionary, first-to-be-cut line in any oil budget. So this industry amplifies the oil cycle: it booms in up-cycles and suffers disproportionately in down-cycles, which is why so many firms have gone bankrupt (§8).

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6. What drives demand

• Upstream oil and gas E&P capex — still the dominant driver. Frontier exploration, offshore development, and 4-D ("time-lapse") reservoir monitoring over producing fields. U.S. onshore 3-D work (e.g., Permian infill) drives the domestic land contractors; global budgets from international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs) drive the marine majors. TGS's >95%-hydrocarbon revenue mix shows how tightly the large data specialists are geared to this pool.[6][9]
• Ocean-bottom nodes (OBN) and 4-D. The fastest-growing offshore segment: nodes give sharper images for developing and monitoring existing fields, and OBN is now viewed as more valuable than towed-streamer work in parts of the market.[17]
• Offshore wind and transmission site characterization. High-resolution geophysical + geotechnical surveys to assess the seabed, hazards, foundations and cable routes — a major recent U.S. Atlantic driver, though policy- and rate-sensitive (see §9).[11][21]
• Infrastructure and utilities. Roads, bridges, tunnels, water systems, transmission lines, pipelines, data centers and industrial facilities increasingly need subsurface mapping before construction — demand that is less tied to commodity prices but exposed to public budgets and construction cycles.
• Critical minerals and mining. Airborne magnetic, radiometric and EM surveys to narrow targets for copper, lithium, rare earths and more — a growing, partly government-funded driver, backed by the USGS 2025 critical-minerals list (§7).[18][19]
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS), geothermal and groundwater. Baseline surveys and monitoring seismic to select and watch CO₂ storage sites (supported in the U.S. by the 45Q tax credit), plus geophysics and remote sensing the Department of Energy flags as central to geothermal exploration.[23]

Third-party researchers project the global geophysical-services market growing at a roughly 3.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to about $24 billion by 2035, with the renewables/energy-transition slice (offshore wind, CCS, geothermal) growing fastest and mineral exploration in the mid-single digits.[24] (Forward estimates, not federal data.)

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7. Regulation

Geophysics is not price-regulated; the binding constraints are environmental permitting and access, heaviest offshore. Regulation here is a commercial barrier as much as a cost.

• Marine surveys. Seismic airgun arrays produce loud underwater sound that can "take" (harass) marine mammals. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, part of NOAA — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) issues incidental-take authorizations with mitigation, monitoring and reporting conditions (protected-species observers, shutdown zones), which can also trigger Endangered Species Act (ESA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews — relevant to species like the North Atlantic right whale. The Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) oil-and-gas survey regime sits in 50 CFR Part 217, Subpart S, and has been repeatedly revised and litigated.[20] Permitting timelines and litigation are real cost and schedule risks.
• Offshore renewables. Projects on the Outer Continental Shelf must submit survey results through plans such as a Site Assessment Plan or Construction and Operations Plan; the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) publishes survey guidelines for the seabed, sub-seabed, hazard and biological-resource data these reviews require.[21]
• Onshore and federal land. On Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, oil-and-gas geophysical exploration requires a notice-and-authorization process; surveys can trigger NEPA review; airborne work is subject to Federal Aviation Administration rules; and many states license geologists/geophysicists.[22] State coastal, cultural-resource, maritime-safety and worker-safety rules add further timing and cost.
• Government as buyer and producer. The USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) runs the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI), a national critical-minerals mapping program funded at roughly $74 million a year (2022–2026) under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, contracting private firms to fly airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys over hundreds of focus areas.[18] For airborne specialists, federal and state programs are a meaningful, counter-cyclical revenue source — and a reason much U.S. geophysical mapping is public-sector. The SBA receipts standard ($28.5m) governs federal small-business set-aside eligibility, not industry size.[3]

The underwriting question is not merely whether a firm can acquire data, but whether it can secure access, permits, qualified personnel, insurance and customer acceptance.

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The federal concentration data describe a fragmented U.S. market (CR4 20.8%, CR50 67.8%, HHI 213.9)[2] — a long tail of smaller firms. But the last decade rewired the global top end through a brutal down-cycle.

Marine seismic — from glut to oligopoly. After the 2014–2016 oil crash, exploration budgets collapsed and vast seismic-vessel overcapacity forced a severe shakeout: SLB (Schlumberger) exited field acquisition and sold its WesternGeco fleet to Shearwater GeoServices in 2018[13]; CGG exited marine acquisition and rebranded to Viridien, pivoting to asset-light imaging, HPC and new markets[10]; ION Geophysical went bankrupt in 2022, its data business absorbed by TGS[15]; and in 2024 TGS and PGS merged in an ~$860m deal to create the largest energy-data company, combining fleets and libraries.[8][15] What was a crowded field is now a handful: TGS (largest), Shearwater (largest pure acquisition fleet, private), Viridien, Fugro (site characterization) and smaller node specialists.

Onshore U.S. — down to one listed contractor. Consolidation and bankruptcy (Geokinetics twice, then SAExploration absorbing its assets in 2018)[15] left Dawson Geophysical as effectively the only U.S.-listed onshore contractor — and Dawson itself is now ~79% controlled by the Wilks Brothers, with a special committee evaluating possible related-party or take-private transactions.[7]

The rest is capability-led M&A. Across the broader engineering-and-geospatial world, consolidation adds regional licenses, federal contract vehicles, technical teams, equipment, data rights or adjacent engineering work rather than chasing pure scale — see Tetra Tech's acquisition of RPS, Lindsay Goldberg's backing of Kleinfelder, and Woolpert's acquisition-led expansion.[26][28][27]

Barriers to entry. Capital intensity (vessels, node spreads, land channels); the scale and book value of a multi-client data library; proprietary imaging IP and HPC; and — offshore — permitting expertise. Instruments are their own oligopoly (Sercel and Geospace), with node technology the current battleground.[10][12][17]

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9. Risks

• Oil-price and E&P-capex cyclicality. The dominant risk. Exploration is the first budget line cut; survey demand swings violently with it.[15]
• Structural decline in frontier exploration. IOCs shoot less brand-new frontier data than a decade ago, shifting the mix toward development, 4-D and monitoring — a smaller, different market than the pre-2014 boom.[16][17]
• Overcapacity / pricing collapse. Excess vessels and crews crush pricing and have driven repeated bankruptcies.[15]
• Project execution. Weather, vessel downtime, access disputes, equipment failure and cost overruns can erase margins on capital-intensive projects.
• Energy-transition demand is policy-dependent. Offshore wind (a key recent U.S. driver) and CCS depend on subsidies, permits, interest rates and political will; U.S. offshore-wind momentum has cooled, and Fugro flagged an early-stage site-characterization slowdown in 2025.[11][24]
• Environmental permitting and litigation. Marine-mammal rules, ESA challenges and NEPA reviews can delay or block surveys and raise costs; rules are also subject to reversal.[20]
• Data-library impairment. Weak markets force write-downs of multi-client book value, hitting earnings.[16]
• Customer concentration. A short list of IOCs/NOCs and, onshore, a handful of E&P operators; small firms may lean on a few energy, infrastructure or government clients.
• Technology and cyber disruption. Nodes displacing streamers, passive/AI-assisted methods and better imaging can strand older equipment and libraries; sensitive infrastructure data carries security liabilities.[17]
• Leverage and governance (private and public plays). PE roll-ups add debt that magnifies failure risk when utilization weakens; on the public side, DWSN and GEOS are thinly traded, and Dawson is a controlled company (~79% Wilks) with take-private discussions ongoing — minority-shareholder and liquidity risk.[7]

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10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (limited). Start from business-model exposure, not ticker selection.

• Onshore contractor: Dawson Geophysical (DWSN) — a micro-cap, deep-cyclical bet on U.S. land seismic, but with a thin float and ~79% Wilks control plus possible take-private, so governance and liquidity are front-and-center.[5][7]
• Instruments: Geospace Technologies (GEOS) — small-cap exposure to nodes and reservoir monitoring, with a diversifying "Smart Water" segment; equipment, not service revenue.[12]
• Marine / data majors (foreign-listed): TGS (Oslo; U.S. OTC ADR TGSGY) for the multi-client + OBN leader; Viridien (Paris; U.S. OTC) for asset-light imaging + Sercel equipment; Fugro (Amsterdam; FUR) for offshore-wind and site-characterization exposure.[8][9][10][11]
• Diversified proxies: SLB retains seismic data/imaging as a minor slice of a giant oilfield-services company; TIC Solutions (NYSE: TIC) and Tetra Tech (TTEK) carry geospatial/engineering exposure buried inside much broader businesses.[13][25][26]
• Before comparing valuation multiples, dividend policies or share prices, normalize currencies, reporting periods, debt, capex and segment definitions — these names span three currencies and very different disclosure. Track utilization, backlog quality, cash flow, capital intensity, customer concentration, data-library economics, and oil-and-gas versus infrastructure/transition mix.

Private / direct routes. This is where most of the domestic industry actually lives: Shearwater (private, the largest marine-acquisition fleet)[13][14]; independent airborne-survey firms well-positioned for government critical-minerals contracts[18]; and a long tail of small onshore crews, geotechnical shops and consultancies — most under the $28.5m SBA small-business line[3] — suited to direct ownership or PE consolidation. Diligence should center on transferable customer relationships, data ownership and reuse rights, repeat revenue, permit history, equipment condition, insurance and safety record, employee retention, founder dependence, working capital, and realistic add-on integration capacity. Government contracting (USGS Earth MRI, state surveys, defense) offers a counter-cyclical revenue stream for airborne specialists.[18]

Outlook (forward-looking judgments). Near-term U.S. onshore demand looks modestly better than the 2024 trough — Dawson's rising backlog and equipment additions point that way[5][6] — while the global market is projected to grow at a low-single-digit rate to the mid-2030s, with growth increasingly coming from OBN/4-D reservoir work and energy-transition uses (CCS, minerals, geothermal) rather than mature frontier exploration.[17][24] The post-shakeout marine oligopoly is more disciplined on capacity, which should support pricing and margins if oil budgets hold. The long-term need for subsurface intelligence is durable — energy, infrastructure, minerals, geothermal and carbon-storage projects all demand better information before capital is committed — but the earnings path will not be smooth: offshore wind has shown project-timing volatility and the large data specialists remain heavily geared to hydrocarbons.[8][11] The strongest businesses will pair recurring or mandated work with differentiated data, disciplined capital allocation, high utilization and multiple end markets; the weakest will stay asset-heavy, customer-concentrated, leveraged and hostage to one commodity cycle. Key swing factors to watch: the oil price and IOC/NOC exploration budgets (the master variable), U.S. offshore-wind and CCS policy, and continued federal critical-minerals survey funding. This remains a small, deep-cyclical, technically demanding industry — one to size and time carefully, not to own passively.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS Definition — 541360 Geophysical Surveying and Mapping Services (2022). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=541360&input=541360&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census (receipts, firms, concentration ratios, HHI) and County Business Patterns 2023 (establishments, employment, payroll) for NAICS 541360 — Histometrics ingested federal statistics. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html; https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards — NAICS 541360, $28.5 million (2023). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns: Coverage / methodology (employer-only universe; nonemployer and government exclusions). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation.html
5. PR Newswire / Dawson Geophysical Company. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2024 Results and full-year 2025 results (revenue, capex) (2025). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dawson-geophysical-reports-fourth-quarter-and-year-end-2024-results-302414582.html
6. PR Newswire / Dawson Geophysical Company. Third Quarter 2025 Results (backlog, crew utilization, capex) (2025). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dawson-geophysical-reports-third-quarter-2025-results-302613559.html
7. Dawson Geophysical Company. 2025 Form 10-K/A — Wilks Brothers ~79% voting control and special-committee review (SEC; StockTitan) (2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/799165/000110465926053054/dwsn-20251231x10ka.htm
8. TGS. TGS and PGS Combine to Establish the Premier Energy Data Company (merger completed July 1, 2024). https://www.tgs.com/press-releases/tgs-and-pgs-combine-to-establish-the-premier-energy-data-company; Riviera, PGS and TGS to merge (2024). https://www.rivieramm.com/news-content-hub/news-content-hub/marine-seismicdata-firms-pgs-and-tgs-to-merge-77771
9. TGS. Q4 2024 Results (market cap ~NOK 20.7bn; multi-client sales-to-investment ~2.2x) and 2025 Annual Report (>95% hydrocarbon-related revenue; sales-to-investment ~2.0x) (2025–2026). https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/02/20/3029285/0/en/TGS-announces-Q4-2024-results.html; https://www.tgs.com/investor-center
10. Marine Technology News. CGG Rebrands to Viridien (2024). https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/news/rebrands-viridien-636825; Viridien, New Ticker Symbol (VIRI) and Full-Year 2025 Financial Update (2024–2026). https://www.viridiengroup.com/company/newsroom/press-release/viridien-introduces-its-new-ticker-symbol
11. Fugro. Annual Report 2025 and Share Capital (Euronext Amsterdam: FUR) (2026). https://www.fugro.com/investors/shares/share-capital; Offshore Energy, Offshore-wind growth brings Fugro strong start of the year (2024 revenue ~€2.3bn; ~35% offshore site-characterization share). https://www.offshore-energy.biz/significant-offshore-wind-growth-brings-fugro-strong-start-of-the-year/
12. Geospace Technologies. Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Results and 2025 Form 10-K / FY2025 results (BusinessWire; SEC; StockAnalysis) (2024–2025). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241121527471/en/Geospace-Technologies-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2024-Results; https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/geos/
13. Journal of Petroleum Technology (SPE). Schlumberger Exits Seismic Acquisition Business (2018); SLB, Shearwater to Acquire Schlumberger Marine Seismic Acquisition Business (2018). https://jpt.spe.org/schlumberger-exits-seismic-acquisition-business; https://www.slb.com/newsroom/press-release/2018/pr-2018-08-22-shearwater
14. Companies House (UK). Shearwater Geoservices Limited — Persons with Significant Control (Rasmussengruppen AS, >75%) (2026). https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07474273/persons-with-significant-control
15. Bloomberg, Oil Market's Caution Bankrupts Seismic Mapper Ion Geophysical (2022); Hart Energy / GlobeNewswire, SAExploration to Acquire Assets of Geokinetics Out of Bankruptcy (2018). https://www.hartenergy.com/news/saexploration-buy-certain-assets-bankrupt-geokinetics-117569/
16. Offshore Magazine. Multi-client acquisition surveys offer opportunities, challenges (prefunding, late sales, library write-downs). https://www.offshore-mag.com/geosciences/article/16754749/multi-client-acquisition-surveys-offer-opportunities-challenges
17. Offshore Magazine / SLB. Ocean-bottom node seismic market gains momentum and OBN market/technology overview (2024–2025). https://www.offshore-mag.com/geosciences/article/14040688/ocean-bottom-node-seismic-market-gains-momentum; https://www.slb.com/products-and-services/innovating-in-oil-and-gas/reservoir-characterization/seismic/ocean-bottom-node-seismic
18. U.S. Geological Survey / Grist. Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) — airborne magnetic/radiometric critical-minerals surveys, ~$74m/yr 2022–2026. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/earth-mri/data; https://grist.org/science/usgs-earth-mri-a-government-program-hopes-to-find-critical-minerals-right-beneath-our-feet/
19. U.S. Geological Survey. About the 2025 List of Critical Minerals (2025). https://www.usgs.gov/programs/mineral-resources-program/science/about-2025-list-critical-minerals
20. NOAA Fisheries. Incidental Take Authorizations Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act; Federal Register / NOAA, Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Geophysical Surveys in the Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico (50 CFR Part 217, Subpart S) (2021–2026). https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act; https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/24/2026-03691/taking-and-importing-marine-mammals-taking-marine-mammals-incidental-to-geophysical-surveys-in-the
21. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Survey Guidelines for Renewable Energy Development (Outer Continental Shelf site characterization) (2026). https://www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/survey-guidelines-renewable-energy-development
22. Bureau of Land Management. Oil & Gas Geophysical Exploration on Federal Land (notice-and-authorization process) (2026). https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas/exploration
23. U.S. Department of Energy. Geothermal Exploration and Characterization (geophysics/remote sensing/subsurface characterization). https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/geothermal/exploration-and-characterization
24. SNS Insider / GlobeNewswire, Geophysical Services Market Size to Surpass USD 24.16 Billion by 2035 (global ~$16.6bn in 2025; ~3.8% CAGR) (2026); GMInsights, Geophysical Services Market (2025). https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/13/3326088/0/en/Geophysical-Services-Market-Size-to-Surpass-USD-24-16-Billion-by-2035.html; https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/geophysical-services-market
25. TIC Solutions, Inc. (formerly Acuren Corporation; NYSE: TIC). 2025 Form 10-K — Acuren's completion of its merger with NV5 Global (Aug 2025) and Oct 2025 rename; geospatial exposure. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2032966/000162828026017015/tic-20251231.htm
26. Tetra Tech, Inc. Tetra Tech Completes Acquisition of RPS Group (2023). https://investor.tetratech.com/news/news-details/2023/Tetra-Tech-Completes-Acquisition-of-Global-Professional-Services-Firm-RPS-Group/default.aspx
27. Terracon, About (100% employee-owned); Woolpert, About/Careers (geospatial, acquisition-led); Dewberry, About (family-owned engineering/mapping/geospatial); HNTB, About (employee-owned infrastructure/geospatial). https://www.terracon.com/about/; https://woolpert.com/about/; https://www.dewberry.com/about; https://www.hntb.com/about/
28. Lindsay Goldberg LLC. Kleinfelder (PE-backed engineering & environmental platform). https://www.lindsaygoldbergllc.com/investments/kleinfelder