Research performed by the Seismic Group is focused on determining large scale continental margin structure, including investigation of possible gas hydrate occurrences.

Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) are the main observational tools used at the Seismic Group. These instruments provide "wide-angle" seismic data. These data can be modelled to determine seismic velocity models of the sediment and crust. The OBSs used at Dalhousie were built as a joint project between the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic) and Dalhousie University.

The Dalhousie Heatflow Probe is capable of determining in situ thermal conductivity and thermal gradient information, by shallow penetration into sediment.

The Seismic Group has developed several pieces of software for use with wide-angle seismic data, which are freely available from the software page. SeisWide is a wide angle seismic processing and modelling program, compatible with Rayinvr. PyShottab is a tool for creating SEGY shot tables, and is an open source program. The group also uses several commercial and academic software packages.