Dear Dr. Paul:

Thank you for submitting your paper to Biogeosciences. I have read your paper, the reviews and rebuttal and believe that a revised manuscript will be acceptable for publication. I therefore invite you to submit a revision which will likely only be inspected by me.

With best regards,

Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Dear Dr. Paul:

Thank you for submitting your revised version to Biogeosciences. I have read it and I am happy to inform you that your paper is now accepted for publication. However, there are a number of technical changes needed.

The flow of the introduction might need some reshuffling. Specifically, please check whether section 1.5 might not better come before section 1.2. Why? Because of flow (you start generic on fragmentary data, then go into the Peru Basin and define some of the abbreviation and then go early diagenesis in Peru basin).

p. 1, l. 34: introduce POC. You introduce the abbreviation in the abstract and on page 2, line 12.
p.1, l. 34: why use the term TOC contents? POC would do as well or are you worrying about DOC?
p.2, l. 18 and all through: cite chronologically, i.e. first Lyle, 1983 and then the others.
p. 2, l. 24: DISCOL is mentioned here, but introduced one page later. One of the reason for reshuffling.
p.5, l. 24: give G-force rather than rpm
p.12, l. 30: is sometimes the upper and sometimes the lower..

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor