The understanding of organic phosphorus (P) dynamics in sediments requires information on their species at the molecular level, but such information in sediment profiles is scarce. A sediment profile was selected from a large eutrophic lake, Lake Taihu (China), and organic P species in the sediments were detected using solution phosphorus-31 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P NMR) following extraction of the sediments with a mixture of 0.25 mol/L NaOH and 50 mmol/L EDTA (NaOH-EDTA) solution. The results showed that P in the NaOH-EDTA extracts was mainly composed of orthophosphate, orthophosphate monoesters, phospholipids, DNA, and pyrophosphate. Concentrations of the major organic P compound groups and pyrophosphate showed a decreasing trend with the increase of depth. Their half-life times varied from 3 to 27 years, following the order of orthophosphate monoesters > phospholipids > or = DNA > pyrophosphate. Principal component analysis revealed that the detected organic P species had binding phases similar to those of humic acid-associated organic P (NaOH-NRP(HA)), a labile organic P pool that tends to transform to recalcitrant organic P pools as the early diagenetic processes proceed. This demonstrated that the depth attenuation of the organic P species could be partly attributed to their increasing immobilization by the sediment solids, while their degradation rates should be significantly lower than what were suggested in previous studies.