Most of the ambient dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is refractory to microbial degradation; bacteria can consume a minor but variable part of the DOC pool over periods of hours and days. It is important to increase our knowledge of the dynamics of the biodegradable fraction of DOC (BDOC) to understand the global carbon budget. Several methods for determining BDOC have been developed; however, the problem of most of them is the time (days/weeks) required for the colonization and/or determination. In this paper, we describe the application to seawater of a plug-flow bioreactor to measure BDOC within 3-4 h. The bioreactor was built following Sondergaard and Worm [Sondergaard. M., Worm, J., 2001. Measurement of biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) in lake water with a bioreactor. Water Res. 35, 2505-2513.] protocols for the measurement of BDOC in lake water. We analyzed BDOC on samples collected in the Gulf of Trieste during autumn-winter and summer 2003-2004. BDOC concentrations varied from 8 to 24 mu M and represented from 10.3% to 25.5% of the total DOC. To evaluate the effectiveness of this method, we compared bioreactor BDOC measurement with data obtained from batch cultures. The results indicate that BDOC in coastal seawater can be measured rapidly and reliably with this bioreactor. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.