A new study led by scientists at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) points to the deep ocean as a major source of
dissolved iron in the central Pacific Ocean. This finding highlights the vital
role ocean mixing plays in determining whether deep sources of iron reach the surface-dwelling
life that need it to survive.
"Our study is a long-term view—over the past 76 million
years—of where iron has been coming from in the central Pacific," says
Tristan Horner, a postdoctoral fellow in the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry
Department at WHOI and lead author of the paper to be published February 3,
2015, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.