The geographical, physical and biological aspects of the submarine canyons of the continental shelf off the coast of southern California have been described in earlier parts of this volume. Isopods were collected in 10 of the 15 canyons. Many benthic species were obtained since the specimens were obtained with a Campbell grab bottom sampler operated from the Hancock Foundation research vessel Velero IV.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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