The DSDP Leg 87 expedition was dedicated to drilling active margins and was designed to investigate two very different regions: the Nankai Trough and the Japan Trench. The broad objective was to study the location, directions, and rates of lithospheric plate convergence for this active margin zone off Japan.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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