The Tara Pacific expedition (2016-2018) sampled coral ecosystems around 32 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and sampled the surface of oceanic waters at 249 locations, resulting in the collection of nearly 58,000 samples. The expedition was designed to systematically study corals, fish, plankton, and seawater, and included the collection of samples for advanced biogeochemical, molecular, and imaging analysis. Here we provide the continuous dataset originating from an optical particle counter ([EDM]; EDM180 GRIMM Aerosol Technik Ainring GmbH & Co. KG, Ainring, Germany) instrument acquiring continuously during the full course of the campaign. Aerosols pumped through one of the ([MAST-PUMP]) inlets were channeled through a conductive tubing of 1.9 cm inner diameter to four parallel 47mm filter holders installed in the rear hold using a vacuum pump (Diaphragm pumpME16 NT, VACUUBRAND BmbH & Co KG, Wertheim, Germany) at a minimum flow rate of 30 lpm (20lpm prior to may 2016). Air was conducted to an optical particle counter ([EDM]; EDM180 GRIMM Aerosol Technik Ainring GmbH & Co. KG, Ainring, Germany) measuring and counting particles in the size range 0.25 - 32 µm as a 30 minutes average, both the particle concentration (nb cm-3) together with its normalized size distribution (dN/dlogDp (nb cm-3 log(nm)-1) i.e., the concentration divided by the log of the width of the bin).