Seventeen chemical elements were determined for 49 samples taken from the GH78-1 cruise of the R/V Hakurei-Maru northern Central Pacific Basin. Thirty-one samples of them are from surface of grabbed sediments and others are ones resampled in core from the same grabbed sediment samples by plastic tube. Sediments containing sea water were stirred and dispersed in distilled water, were separated from water in the centrifuge, and the water was decanted. This cleansing process was repeated four or five times until no chloride ion was admitted. Then the sediments were dried, ground under the size of 200 mesh (74 micrometer), and contained in a desiccator as the sample for analysis. Bound water (H2O+) and carbon dioxide (CO2) were determined by heating the sample at 1000 °C. All oxide components were determined by wet chemistry. The other minor ekements were measured using atomic absorption spectrophotometry.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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 XII-1, pp. 218-219 of the related publication.