Biogeosciences, 5, 299–310, 2008 www.biogeosciences.net/5/299/2008/ © Author(s) 2008. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Biogeosciences

Volume distribution for particles between 3.5 to 2000 µm in the upper 200 m region of the South Pacific Gyre L. Stemmann1,2 , D. Eloire3 , A. Sciandra1 , G. A. Jackson4 , L. Guidi1,2 , M. Picheral1 , and G. Gorsky1 1 Laboratoire

d’Oc´eanographie de Villefranche (LOV), Observatoire Oc´eanologique, BP 28, 06234 Villefranche sur mer Cedex, France 2 Universit´ e Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris6, UMR 7093, Villefranche sur Mer, 06234 France, Laboratoire d’Oc´eanographie de Villefranche (LOV), Observatoire Oc´eanologique, BP 28, 06234 Villefranche sur mer Cedex, France 3 Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK 4 Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA Received: 12 September 2007 – Published in Biogeosciences Discuss.: 27 September 2007 Revised: 3 January 2008 – Accepted: 1 February 2008 – Published: 3 March 2008

Abstract. The French JGOFS BIOSOPE cruise crossed the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) on a transect between the Marquesas Islands and the Chilean coast on a 7500 km transect (8◦ S–34◦ S and 8◦ W–72◦ W). The number and volume distributions of small (3.5