“…Earlier studies on this topic were focused on the marine budget of dissolved Si, its cycling, and application as a water mass tracer (DeMaster, 1981;Nelson et al, 1995;Tréguer et al, 1995;Dileep Kumar and Li, 1996;You, 2000). Investigations on the budget of Si require knowledge of its sources to, and sinks within the oceans; in this context there have been several studies on its behavior in estuaries and shelf regions (Borole et al, 1977;DeMaster et al, 1991DeMaster et al, , 1996Eyre and Balls, 1999;Somayajulu et al, 2002;Michalopoulos and Aller, 2004). During the last decade, studies on Si marine biogeochemistry took a major leap with the advent of Si isotope measurements in conjunction with its dissolved concentrations; this provided better insights into its various sources, sinks and internal cycling in the open ocean environments Cardinal et al, 2005;Reynolds et al, 2006;Beucher et al, 2011;Cavagna et al, 2011;De La Rocha et al, 2011;Fripiat et al, 2011;de Souza et al, 2012a,b;Grasse et al, 2013).…”