As a part of a continuing study of the distribution and abundance of tellurium in various materials of the earth's crust, analyses were made of 12 samples of manganese nodules from the Pacific and Indian Ocean. The quantitative determination of tellurium is based on the induced precipitation of elemental gold from a 6NHCl solution containing gold chloride, cupric chloride, and hypophosphorous acid; the amount of gold reduced is proportional to the amount of tellurium present. As little as 1 nanogram (1 × 10-9 g) of tellurium gives a measurable reaction with 1 mg of gold in 50 ml of solution.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 1, pp. 1568 of the related publication. However, the authors have apparently transmitted to NOAA-NGDC more analysis results for some samples than in the published table of the report.