How Iron Gets into the North Pacific

From a site at 47 degrees north latitude and 160 degrees east longitude in the Western North Pacific (marked X), iron and manganese found at depths of 100-200 meters originated hundreds of miles away, from the continental shelves of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands. Particulate and dissolved iron and manganese hydroxides came from the upper shelf, and, after further processing, more iron (now poor in manganese) came from deeper on the slopes. Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory