The cooperative cruise of the R/V S.P. Lee in 1983 provided an excellent opportunity for a wide-range interlaboratory study on samples of crusts ground and sieved aboard the vessel. Analytical data on splits of approximately 56 samples were performed by the U.S. Geological Survey laboratories in Reston Virginia and Woods Hole Massachusetts, (see Chapter V), the Bureau of Mines laboratory in Avondale, Maryland, and the laboratory of the German Geological Survey in Hannover, Federal Republic of Germany. At USGS Woods-Hole, 2.0 cm thick mini-slabs from ferromanganese crust or nodule outer surface were separated into horizons and layers. They were ground and sieved through a 105 micron nylon mesh. Remaining ferromanganese material was removed by washing with 10 percent hydroxylamine hydrochloride (NH2OH.HCL) and 1 percent oxalic acid. Samples were first dried at 110°C overnight for the determination of hydroscopic water (H2O-). Major and minor element concentrations were determined by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 a part of the digitized Table 4, pp. C04-1 to C04-7 of the related publication.