DSDP 162 is located due north of DSDP 161 on the lower west flank of the East Pacific Rise about 3900 km west of the crest. It is in the Clarion-Clipperton block, about 80 km south of the Clarion Fracture Zone. The site lies at the extreme northern edge of the zone of thick sediments that parallels the equator in the Pacific and marks the region of high biological productivity.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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