Site 1214 is located in lower bathyal (3402 m) water depth on the southern flank of the Southern High of Shatsky Rise at the location of DSDP Site 306 (Larson, Moberly, et al., 1975). At Site 306, 380.6 m of 475 m drilled was cored, but a total of only 27.3 m (7%) was recovered. These sedimentary rocks include calcareous porcellanite and chert with subordinate nannofossil chalk and ooze ranging in age from late Albian to early Berriasian. The Cretaceous sequence is overlain by a thin (9 m) Holocene ooze cover. The biostratigraphy of Site 306 was reinterpreted by Sliter (1992), who also reinterpreted the seismic stratigraphy (Sliter and Brown, 1993). R2, the shallowest reflector in the sequence, corresponds to the Barremian/Aptian boundary.
Site 1214 is the second deepest site in the Shatsky Rise transect, ~500 m deeper than Site 1211 and ~450 m shallower than Site 1213. The Site 1214 depth is close to that of Site 1208 on the Central High. The depth lies in the middle of the three sites targeting mid-Cretaceous sediments, including Site 1207 (3101 m) and Site 1213 (3883 m). According to the paleodepth reconstruction of Thierstein (1979), the site lay at ~2.2 km at 120 Ma, assuming normal oceanic crust subsidence. However, subsidence was likely more rapid than normal crust in the interval immediately after its formation; thus, the site may have been slightly deeper.
Coring at Site 1214 was designed to recover a more complete and continuous record of the Hole 306 sequence. The major goals of Site 1214 drilling were to core an intermediate-water Aptian-Albian sequence, improving on the Site 306 recovery. This section exists at shallow burial depths; thus, it can be reached without coring through an extensive ooze-chert sequence. The site will be included in broad leg-based objectives that include