In 1970, the United States put forward the first detailed and comprehensive proposal for a regime which would apply to the mining of manganese nodules in the area beyond national jurisdiction. The United States' draft Convention on the International Seabed Area made a significant contribution towards moving the U.N. Seabed Committee from the stage of engaging in general debate to making specific proposals. In the U.S. draft, an "International Seabed Resource Authority" would have the power to license the mining of manganese nodules and would carry on certain supervisory activities in connection therewith. In the planning of the expected fast-approaching exploitation stage for manganese nodules the U.N. Seabed Committee collected and prepared documents and data in 1972 for an initial session of the Law of the Sea Conference which was expected to take place in 1973.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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.

Supplement to: UN (1972): Comparative table of draft treaties, working papers and draft articles. United Nations Secretariat for the Seabed Committee