Because drilling during the DSDP-IPOD program had not yet succeeded in sampling Jurassic sediments from the Mesozoic superocean, remnants of which remain in the western Pacific, Leg 89 was designed to recover sediments of probably Bathonian-Callovian age (150-160 m.y. old). Recovery of such sediments would enable us to compare Mesozoic superocean strata and paleoenvironmental conditions with Atlantic sediments, paleoenvironments of similar age, and coeval strata deposited along Tethyan continental margins-now exposed in Tertiary fold belts. It was expected that this Mesozoic sediment record could be recovered at Site MZP-6 (Leg 89, Site 585) in the deep East Mariana Basin.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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