Complementary sampling of air, snow, sea-ice and seawater for a range of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) was undertaken through the early stages of respective spring sea-ice melting at coastal sites in northeast Greenland and eastern Antarctica to investigate OCP concentrations and redistribution during this time. Mean concentrations in seawater, sea-ice and snow were generally greater at the Arctic site. For example, a-HCH was found to have the largest concentrations of all analytes in Arctic seawater and sea-ice meltwater samples (224 to 253 and 34.7 to 48.2 pg·L-1 respectively compared to 1.0 to 1.3 and