REGENERATION RATES IN THE OCEAN.

Biologically fixed chemical species (such as silicon, carbon, and calcium) are regenerated to ocean water in the course of settling of biogenic particles. Theoretical relationships developed in this paper show that regeneration rates of chemical species (mass per unit volume of ocean water per unit time) depend on the abundance of particles in the biological productivity zone of the ocean, shape of the particle-size distribution, and dissolution rates of the mineral phases of which the particles are made. For a constant dissolution rate of a mineral phase, regeneration rate decreases with depth owing to solution losses of the smaller particles in the spectrum.