Of numerous island-arc systems in the western Pacific, the Mariana arc-trench system and the basins and submerged ridges lying west of them in the Philippine Sea seemed to be best suited to answer questions regarding arc-trench and back-arc basin formation. Three years of planning by the JOIDES Active Margin Panel, Ocean Crust Panel, and Planning Committee resulted in a proposed transect of drill sites aligned more or less along the 18th parallel. This South Philippine Sea transect was designed to investigate each major basin and ridge between the central part of the West Philippine Sea and the Mariana Trench and the Pacific Ocean plate immediately to the east.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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: Zakariadze, Guram S; Usher, John L; Theyer, Fritz; Sartori, Renzo; Rodolfo, Kelvin S; Mattey, David P; Martini, Erlend; Keating, Barbara; Ishii, Teruaki; Heiman, M E; Chotin, Pierre; Brassell, Simon C; Balshaw, K M; Kroenke, Loren W; Scott, R (1981): Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, U.S. Government Printing Office, LIX, 1020 pp