Baltimore Canyon Trough, the most intensely studied offshore sedimentary basin of the U.S. Atlantic margin, encompasses the coastal plain, continental shelf, and continental slope of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and (in part) Virginia. On the basis of the extensive published record of the geological and geophysical investigations of this area, the New Jersey margin was chosen as the most suitable location for constructing the first marginwide stratigraphic transect. As envisioned, the transect would extend from the outcrop belt in central New Jersey to a location 700 km distant on the lower continental rise. Initial Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) core holes on the slope and upper rise would emphasize the Cenozoic and Upper Cretaceous sections, as dictated by the limitations of openhole drilling. Leg 95 was principally intended to provide a crucial link between shelf and lower rise sites which had been cored along the transect during Leg 93.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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