First Paragraph
A detailed understanding of the biogeochemical cycles of organic chemicals of environmental concern (OCEC) in the ocean requires measurement of their concentrations in the water column (Farrington and Takada, 2014, in this issue, and references therein). Obtaining these measurements remains a major challenge. Those of us who have attempted low concentration OCEC measurements in open ocean seawater know that research vessels can be considered a floating cloud of contaminants of the same or interfering compounds, as is true for trace metals (Froelich, 2014, this issue).