Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Legs 64 and 65 were planned as a coordinated drilling investigation of the Gulf of California. The primary goals of Leg 64 were to investigate the early evolution of a passive continental margin and to study hydrothermal systems in the Guaymas Basin. Leg 65 was designed to study the processes of crustal accretion along the relatively fastspreading East Pacific Rise for comparison with the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It was planned to drill a transect across the East Pacific Rise just south of the Tamayo Fracture Zone and to penetrate deep into the crust at one site near the ridge crest. The purpose was to sample crustal sections formed at a relatively fast spreading ridge in order to investigate the processes of crustal accretion in this environment.

From 1983 until 1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions. At the time it was the most extended data compilation on ferromanganese deposits world wide. Initially published in a proprietary format incompatible with present day standards it was jointly decided by AWI and NOAA to transcribe this legacy data into PANGAEA. This transfer is augmented by a careful checking of the original sources when available and the encoding of ancillary information (sample description, method of analysis...) not present in the NOAA-MMS database.