The scientific party of Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 198 would like to thank many individuals who combined to make drilling on Shatsky Rise a major success. First and foremost, we thank Captain Pete Mowat and his crew for safe passage, for communicating with us regularly about important operational matters, and for the interest that they showed in our science. We are extremely grateful to Drilling Superintendent Scott Pedersen and his staff for excellent core recovery and for their willingness to pull out the stops to increase recovery in the difficult chalk-chert sequences and to change plans at a moment’s notice. The engineers, drillers, and roughnecks worked extremely hard for the duration of the cruise. Alex Sousa and the Catemar crew served delicious and nutritious food for the whole cruise and produced memorable barbeques up on deck. Operations Manager Mike Storms shared his wealth of knowledge and experience with us, kept us fully informed as to all of our options, patiently allowed us to change plans numerous times, and tirelessly worked to squeeze out the time to recover one more core. We are extremely grateful to him. We thank the technicians and Yeoperson Lisa Crowder who worked exceedingly hard for the duration of the cruise, were good-natured even when we asked them to move cores for an umpteenth time, and catered to our many technical requests. We thank Will Sager, Adam Klaus, and Larisa Khankishieva for sharing their seismic survey data and interpretations, without which drilling at many of the sites would not have been possible. Phil Rumford and the Gulf Coast Repository staff worked hard to help us sample the cores. Finally, we thank the ODP publications staff for their hard work in producing this volume.