This report represents the first in a projected series reporting core descriptions and their physical properties, to be made available through routine core handling procedures instituted at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics in 1968 to keep pace with the capability to take long (120-foot) piston cores from the University of Hawaii's R/V MAHI. The data reported herein cover sediment cores collected during 1967, 1968, and 1969 in the region of the Solomon Islands and the Darvir. Rise, and along the central portion of the Murray Fracture Zone.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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