The main objective of the cruise was to study the sediments and sedimentary processes in an area known as Great Meteor East (GME) - part of a feasibility study into the ocean disposal of high-level radioactive waste commissioned by the Department of the Environment. Previous cruises (Discovery 118, 126, 134 and Farnella 3/81) had done much of the ground work, consequently the area was already well known but not necessarily well understood for the purposes of our investigation.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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.