Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, Brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic Brain Stuff episode.

In this one, we dig into how the life-giving nutrients in Earth's oceans come from a

perhaps unlikely source, dust from deserts.

Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here, the Sahara Desert is a long way from the Caribbean,

but that doesn't matter.

What happens in Africa doesn't necessarily stay in Africa.

Take dust, for instance.

The dirt on the ground in North Africa is dry, and the desert is windy.

Every summer, dust from the dunes of the world's largest desert pours into the atmosphere

over the North Atlantic to seed the world's oceans with nutrients that are sorely limited

in many marine ecosystems, most notably iron, which is essential to the growth of plants.

What happens to that dust after it leaves home can be very good or very bad.

It's sort of a crapshoot.

Nothing is stationary or permanent or simple on this wild planet of ours.

The major dust-related pro, the iron that gives Saharan dust its rich red color, feeds

the phytoplankton into Caribbean, and along the coast of the southeastern United States,

which is important because you want to know a big reason why you're breathing air right

now?

Phytoplankton.

We spoke with Jason Westrich, a post-doctoral research scientist in the University of

Georgia's Department of Microbiology.

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