Sites 595 and 596 of DSDP Leg 91 are located in one of the most poorly studied tracts of seafloor in the world at the time of the survey. During a preparation survey done by the R/V Melville a particular question of geologic regional significance was the lithologic nature of the "reverberant layer" detected in the Southwest Pacific Basin, especially to the north of the site. The drilling also beared on two important aspects of the oceanic crustal composition: the chemistry and petrology of the lavas erupted at rapidly spreading ridges, and the nature and degree of alteration experienced by those lavas over the 100+ m.y. of their posteruptive history.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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