The competitive adsorption of gelatin and sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) at hydrophobic surfaces was investigated with surface and interfacial tension measurements, ellipsometry, surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR), and total internal reflectance fluorescence spectroscopy(TIRF). From both ellipsometry and SPR, initial additions of SDBS after gelatin preadsorption were found to result in a total adsorbed amount increase, as well as in a swelling of the adsorbed layer. At higher SDBS concentrations, both the total adsorbed amount and the amount of gelatin adsorbed decrease, which was observed from ellipsometry, SPR, and TIRF. From surface and interfacial tension measurements, it was found that the critical aggregation concentration(cac) for the SDBS-gelatin system decreases with decreasing pH. Analogous to this, ellipsometry, SPR, and TIRF indicate that the SDBS concentration required to cause a significant decrease in the gelatin adsorbed amount decreases with decreasing pH. The desorption therefore seems to be correlated to the SDBS binding to the adsorbed gelatin molecules rather than purely competitive adsorption.