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Updated: Mar 13, 2026

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology
Published on: November 5, 2014
Dissolved organic sulfur in the ocean: Biogeochemistry of a petagram inventory
Kerstin B Ksionzek1, Oliver J Lechtenfeld2, S Leigh McCallister3
1Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany. MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, Leobener Straße, D-28359 Bremen, Germany. kerstin.ksionzek@awi.de boris.koch@awi.de.
Abstract:
Although sulfur is an essential element for marine primary production and critical for climate processes, little is known about the oceanic pool of nonvolatile dissolved organic sulfur (DOS). We present a basin-scale distribution of solid-phase extractable DOS in the East Atlantic Ocean and the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. Although molar DOS versus dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) ratios of 0.11 ± 0.024 in Atlantic surface water resembled phytoplankton stoichiometry (sulfur/nitrogen ~ 0.08), increasing dissolved organic carbon (DOC) versus DOS ratios and decreasing methionine-S yield demonstrated selective DOS removal and active involvement in marine biogeochemical cycles. Based on stoichiometric estimates, the minimum global inventory of marine DOS is 6.7 petagrams of sulfur, exceeding all other marine organic sulfur reservoirs by an order of magnitude.
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