Dear Peter:

I have read your manuscript, the reviews and your rebuttal and believe that a revised version (according to your rebuttal) will make a nice, lasting contribution to Biogeosciences. I therefore invite you to submit a revised version. The referees were very positive and there is no need for addtional detailed review. I will inspect the revision and then likely accept.

With best regards,

Jack Middelburg
Associate Editor

Dear Peter:

Thanks for submitting this nice paper to Biogeosciences. I have read the revised version and I am happy to inform you that your paper is now accepted for publication in Biogeosciences.

While reading I identified the following minor points:

-p 2, l. 21: while I applaud that you make available all basic data, this is no information for an abstract. You already mention at the end of the introduction and end of the paper. That should be enough

- all through, the readability might improve if you would use hyphen multiple adjectives (Deep-sea research vs. deep sea as a noun). Examples: time-lag bias, time-lag correction. Please discuss with your native speaking co-authors. I leave it up to you.

p. 12, bottom part: does the time-lag bias not also depend on the flux, the higher the flux, the larger the gradient, all else being the same.

p. 16, line 23: why should it be coated with phyto-detritus (only). Microbial biofilms might be another option.

Section 5 (summary and recommendation). This section comprises 4 very short (sometimes one sentence only) paragraphs. Why not merge them?

p. 24, line 34 and p. 25, line 2: it is F.J.R. Meysman (R is missing).

With best regards,
Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor