Easterly winds prevailed in the northern region (78±13°) and north-easterly winds in the south (46.1±12°). During 25–28 January, a major dust deposition event occurred, while the ship was in the southwest of the region, making the sky brown and covering the ship in a layer of red-brown dust. The dust cloud was clearly visible in satellite images and back trajectories for these dates show that

the air mass came from the Sahara region. Seawater samples were collected using a trace metal clean technique from 20 m depth, to minimize iron contamination from the ship’s hull, using a rosette of 20-L Niskin bottles mounted on a titanium frame with a CTD profiler (Sea-Bird Electronics) in polyoxymethylene plastic and titanium casing. Samples were decanted learn more into 1-L HCl-cleaned polycarbonate bottles. The experiments commenced within an hour of sampling. Dust samples were collected daily, at sea, onto polypropylene filters (47 mm, 0.45 μm, Sterlitech). Rotary vein vacuum pumps filtered aerosol at 25–30 L min−1 for periods of typically 24 h, although this was reduced to 4–6 h during the major dust event on 25–28 January. The instantaneous dissolution of metals and nutrients was simulated

Bcl-2 inhibitor by quickly passing 100 mL of deionized water (milli-Q) through the dust-loaded filter (Buck et al., 2006) and the leachate was subsampled into sterile 2-mL polypropylene vials. The bacterioplankton response to dust and leachate additions was determined by time-course sampling during incubations lasting 24 h. Four incubations were performed, two in the southwest of the region and two in the north (Fig.

1). Seawater samples (34 mL) were incubated in HCl-cleaned 35-mL PTFE bottles with dust, leachate or no (control) additions. Dust was added with the polypropylene filter onto which it was collected; additions were calculated postcruise to be 0.3 mg L−1 (incubation 1), 1.5 mg L−1 (incubation 2) or 4.7 mg L−1 (incubations 3 and 4). A further control of a blank polypropylene filter was used to ensure that the bacterioplankton response was due to the dust and not the filter. Leachate additions of 700 μL supplied 100 nM inorganic N and 10 nM P to all incubations. Bottles were placed in Protein kinase N1 on-deck incubators screened to allow 20% surface irradiance and cooled to in situ temperature. The uptake rate of 35S-methionine (35S-Met) was measured at t=0, 2, 4, 6 and 24 h to determine the bacterioplankton community metabolic response to treatments (+Leachate or +Dust) as compared with controls. Two incubations were also sampled at t=8 h. At t=0 and 6 h, samples were taken to measure cellular uptake by sorted bacterioplankton groups. A further eight t=0 h samples were collected throughout the cruise to measure the cellular uptake in response to natural dust deposition in the ocean.