A method of computing the location of air guns and hydrophones within a seismic spread utilizes a navigation network having a plurality of stations. The network provides a plurality of navigation observations. A number of the observations consist of magnetic bearings which are used to derive the hydrophone locations. The method includes the steps of: a. obtaining a set of observations from the network, each observation being obtained by using navigation devices whose origin system moves independent of the navigation reference point; and b. forming a design matrix wherein the magnetic bearings are modeled based on the equation: <IMAGE>
