This publication was prepared by the Ocean Drilling Program, Texas A&M University, as an account of work performed under the international Ocean Drilling Program, which is managed by Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation. Funding for the program was provided by the following agencies at the time of this cruise:

Australia/Canada/Chinese Taipei/Korea Consortium for Ocean Drilling: Department of Primary Industries and Energy (Australia), Natural Resources Canada, National Taiwan University in Taipei, and Korean Institute for Geology, Mining and Minerals

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Federal Republic of Germany)

European Science Foundation Consortium for Ocean Drilling (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland)

Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers–Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INSU–CNRS) (France)

Marine High-Technology Bureau of the State Science and Technology Commission of the People’s Republic of China

National Science Foundation (United States)

Natural Environment Research Council (United Kingdom)

University of Tokyo, Ocean Research Institute (Japan)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the participating agencies, Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc., Texas A&M University, or Texas A&M Research Foundation.

Abbreviations for names of organizations and publications in ODP reference lists follow the style given in Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (published by American Chemical Society).

The bulk of the shipboard-collected data from this leg is available on the World Wide Web and is accessible at www-odp.tamu.edu/database. If you cannot access this site or need additional data, please contact the ODP Data Librarian, Ocean Drilling Program, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845-9547, U.S.A. (e-mail: database@odpemail.tamu.edu).

Supplemental data on the volume CD-ROM were provided by the authors and may not conform to ODP publication formats.

Some close-up photographs of very dark cores have been tonally enhanced to better illustrate particular features of interest.

A site map showing the drilling locations for this leg and maps showing the drilling locations of all Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) drilling sites are available on the volume CD in PDF format.

Beginning with Initial Reports Volume 176 and Scientific Results Volume 169, all Proceedings volumes will be published on CD-ROM and the World Wide Web at www-odp.tamu.edu/publications.

Initial Reports
Booklet format: ISSN 0884-5883
CD-ROM format: ISSN 1096-2522
WWW format: ISSN 1096-2158		 Scientific Results
Book: ISSN 0884-5891
CD-ROM format: ISSN 1096-2514
WWW format: ISSN 1096-7451

Cover photograph by Alan T. Linde is of a battery pack for a borehole geophysical observatory being lowered from the JOIDES Resolution to the seafloor during Leg 186.