Recent measurements of dissolved (including colloidal) organic carbon (DOC) and nitrogen (DON) concentrations in the northwestern Pacific (Sugimura and Suzuki, 1988; Suzuki et al., 1985) are 50 to 400% higher than previous results found for oceanic surface and deep waters (Figures 1,2). These elevated concentrations, as yet unconfirmed, have been accepted as gospel by some, as heresy by others, with the skeptics somewhere in between.

Williams, P.M., and E.R.M. Druffel. 1988. Dissolved organic matter in the ocean: Comments on a controversy. Oceanography 1(1):14–17, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1988.33.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.