Mn crust samples were taken from dredge hauls collected at 16 sites by the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics. They are located along the Line Islands Archipelago between 15°S and 17°N, and from depths between 1150 and 4700 m. Each sample was analysed for La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, Er, Yb, and Lu on the Kings College (London) inductively coupled plasma (IPC) spectrophotometer. Following digestion with a mixture of hydrofluoric and perchloric acid, residues were taken up in HCl and the REE isolated by means of cation exchange. The REE were converted to nitrates in concentrated HNO3 and analysed in a 2N HNO3 matrix. The levels of accuracy were determined by comparison with Kings College standards and were found to be better than -+ 6% for all elements except Pr and Lu (+ 9%). Precision was better than + 1% for all 11 elements. In addition, phosphorous was determined by ICP spectrophotometry at Imperial College.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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.This dataset represents the digitized Table 2, pp. 15, of Manheim, FT & Lane-Bostwick, CM (1989).In the published table we have not duplicated the values for Mn,Fe,Ti,Co,Pb which are available for the same samples bearing the same ID-Label in doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.945241