Methods are described for actively steering a towed marine seismic component using one or more actively controllable control members; reducing the actively steering of the control members during duration of a time window of recording seismic reflections from a sub-surface geological feature of interest; and resuming the actively steering of the control members after the time window. The marine seismic component may be a streamer, a source, or both. Other methods allow measuring initial orientation of a streamer based on measuring static control surface angle of a control surface of an inline steerable bird. This abstract is provided to comply with the rules requiring an abstract, and allow a reader to ascertain the subject matter of the technical disclosure. It will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.