Nereus Deep is situated within the NW-SE trending median valley of the Red Sea and is divided along its length by a saddle into two parallel basins. Each basin contains a number of distinct depressions which either contain brine pools, or show evidence of having contained them in the past. Geochemical analysis of unwashed samples of sediment cores from the Deep has been undertaken for Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Pb, Ni, Co, Cr, Hg and Ca using atomic absorption techniques. This has confirmed the observed presence of several metalliferous layers within the sediments.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 digitized Table 1, pp. 128 of the related publication.