Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the U.S. Navy, the State University of New York at Albany, Wesleyan University, Oregon State University, Dalhousie University, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography participated in the Cayman Trough expedition durieng 15 ALVIN dives in January and February 1976. The survey focused on a spreading center is a 150-km section of the plate boundary running across the floor of the Cayman Trough, where two tectonic plates are actually moving apart.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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

Supplement to: Heirtzler, James R (1976): Submersible studies of the Cayman Trough. In: Geodynamics Project U.S. Progress Report - 1976. National Academy of Sciences, Washington D.C., USA; https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007158946, 11-17