More than 30 million dollars are expended annually to assess environmental quality of the Southern California Bight, yet only 5% of the Bight area is surveyed on an ongoing basis. Because decision makers lacked the data to make regional assessments of ecosystem condition, multiple stakeholders collaborated to create a Southern California Bight Regional Monitoring Program. The third survey in this program was conducted in 2003. A primary goal of this regional monitoring program was to determine the extent and magnitude of sediment contamination in the Southern California Bight, and to compare these assessments among several different habitats. A stratified random...