In a recent article, Lyle et al. (2005) used acoustic data to argue that 230Th-normalization overestimates sediment focusing in the equatorial Pacific by as much as an order of magnitude. They argue that lateral transport of 230Th in the water column results in much wider geographical variability in the vertical flux of scavenged 230Th than recognized by geochemists who have studied the behavior of this isotope in the water column. We disagree with this view and point to what we perceive as flaws in the arguments presented by these authors.