In April, separate seaborne hydrographic survey work by Brazilian oil giant Petrobras off the North Island's East Cape prompted a small armada of vessels and Greenpeace to protest against the prospect of deep sea drilling, in the wake of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill in the United States.
OMV New Zealand managing director Peter Zeilinger said when contacted that it was unknown if protesters were headed south, but a spokesman said being 100km offshore in the Great South Basin "was not territory for small vessels".
Polarcus Alima arrived in Wellington on Friday and is scheduled to be off the coast of the lower South Island to begin its survey early this week.
Polarcus will carry a team of five marine mammal observers during the survey, four more than required by the Department of Conservation, to look and listen for whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.
They work independently from OMV, and the company said the observers could "shut down the survey" whenever marine mammals entered safety distances, as defined by Doc.
Between now and July next year, Polarcus will acquire a minimum of data covering 2250sq km, but is targeting a total 4000sq km, of first-time 3-D surveying, having already completed 19,000km of 2-D data in two previous Great South Basin surveys.
OMV announced in mid-August it was expanding its offshore exploration in the area after confirming Shell New Zealand was becoming its majority joint venture partner, with a further $50 million going into the data acquisition.
OMV said in a statement the survey did not necessarily mean that drilling was imminent.
"It will take until the end of 2013 to process and evaluate the seismic data before drilling can even be considered, but we remain hopeful of a positive result," the company said.
Four and a-half years ago, the Great South Basin was lauded as the latest "frontier" exploration area in the country when oil giants Exxon and OMV were separately awarded permits which could have attracted up to $1.2 billion in exploration spending. Exxon pulled out in October last year, citing technical difficulties and lack of a joint venture partner.
• On its 5500km voyage to New Zealand Polarcus became the first seismic vessel to successfully transit the arctic Northern Sea Route; a route from the Barents Sea, off Norway, to Cape Dezhnev in the Bering Strait, via the northern coast of Russia.
