Efforts to reproduce the high-temperature catalytic oxidation technique for the determination of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in marine samples are described ana details of the construction of a home-made DOC analyzer are presented. Calibration of this instrument is compared with that of a commercial analzyer. Various problems relating to the determination of the instrument blank, instrument calibration, sample collection, preservation and processing are presented. Several hypotheses explaining the observed analytical artifacts are proposed and possible implications of these artifacts are discussed.