Sediment cores of the Bauer Deep were obtained by standard piston-coring techniques on cruises of the R/V Atlantis II (no. 54) and R/V Chain (no. 100) of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The sediment samples we analyzed were obtained by taking 1- to 10-cm sections from the center of the split cores. All samples were rinsed to remove sea salt, ground under acetone, and sieved through a nylon screen (200 mesh). The sieved samples were split into separate portions for bulk chemical analysis, CaCO3 determination, and x-ray diffraction where this was deemed useful. CaCO3 was determined by 0.2 M acetic acid leach at 50°C for 2 hrs. Residual Ca was determined by atomic absorption as well as Mg, Na, K, Fe and Mn. The data suggest tha a small but detectable amount of Fe is leached in excess of that occuring in the ferromanganese compounds. This may originate either in an iron oxyhydroxlde phase containing no Mn or through leaching of the Fe montmorillonite.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 3, pp. 1425 of the related publication.