During the campaign SO23/2 (R/V Sonne) in the South China sea various manganese deposits were retrieved by dredging. Two representative samples were selected for chemical analysis: one Mn crust (0.4 cm thick) attached to a vesicular olivine basalt fragment for station 40KD and one irregular spheroidal shaped Mn nodule with rough surface and a Miocene chalk core for station 44KD. Their chemical composition was determined by X-ray fluorescence analysis on the grounded bulk sample.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 5 and 6, pp. 152 and 154 of the related publication.