The United States Coast Guard Research & Development Center intends to negotiate and award a sole-source fixed price contract to the Smithsonian Institute (SI) of Washington, DC to determine an instrument-specific threshold limit for chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) that will be used to verify ballast water exchange. The study must measure the CDOM content of a large number of shipboard and port samples from a broad range of geographic locations, ballasted conditions, and environmental backgrounds. These include samples from fully exchanged, partially exchanged, and unexchanged ballast tanks, oceanic water (more than 200 nautical miles from shore), and port water that ranges from high salinity to low salinity. The study must also investigate and account for matrix effects that intensify or attenuate the signal of the samples relative to the calibration standard. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), a branch of SI will conduct this work. SERC maintains the only extant database of chemical tracers, including CDOM at the specific wavelength pair of interest and has conducted multivariate analyses on the data. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code is 541712. Interested parties may identify their interest and capabilities in response to this requirement to the above address. The determination by the Government not to compete the proposed contract based upon response to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct future competitive procurement(s). To be eligible for award, offerors must be registered with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR): www.ccr.gov. For information concerning the acquisition, contact the contracting official listed above. See notes 22 and 26.

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