Iron-manganese crusts were chosen from existing collections in order to cover as wide an area and depth range as possible. Sampling was concentrated in the Central Pacific seamount provinces where crusts are most commonly found coating lithic substrates. Rare earth element analyses were made on unleached material by inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 was digitized from Table 2, pp. 8 of the linked publication.