Our paper based on the findings from an oceanographic cruise: “DY017” in November 2014 is available through Open Access here. This was one of Discovery’s early voyages and so much of the cruise was spent ironing out bugs in the ship’s systems. In addition the weather, as might be expected for the time of year, was inclement. Nonetheless, we completed several transects of the shelf edge and managed to collect enough data to estimate the carbon and nutrient fluxes between the shallow continental shelf and the deep ocean. We found that the Hebrides shelf exports 3-5 times the global mean of Particulate Organic Carbon (POC) through downwelling circulation which is typical of the region. This could represent 1% of the total global downslope POC export, and means that the Hebrides shelf is likely to be a significant source of POC for the northeast Atlantic Ocean.
Contoured section plots for each transect of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), particulate organic carbon (POC), particulate organic nitrogen (PON), particulate organic phosphorus (POP), and biogenic silica (bSi).
Sam Jones 