The coastal zone color scanner (CZCS) has provided what may be the most convincing evidence to data of a large-scale ocean response to a volcanic eruption. Brock and McClain's (1992) 4-year time series of pigments over the Arabian Sea appears to reveal a slowdown in production over much of this basin. Apparently, the entire southwest monsoon relaxed beneath the tremendous pall of the El Chich¿n aerosol cloud that had overshadowed the region 4 months earlier, producing dramatically reduced concentrations of phytoplankton during summer and fall 1982. ¿American Geophysical Union 1993