Meiobenthos, National Monitoring Study 2019, EMBLAS Plus Project, EMBLAS Plus Project

Method steps

1. Group Eumeiobenthos, Pseudomeiobenthos
   rank: unranked

Data collected within the EMBLAS-Plus “EU-UNDP Project 'Improving Environmental Monitoring in the Black Sea' (EMBLAS-Plus)” (http://emblasproject.org/). 10 samples of meiobenthos were taken during the National Monitoring Study in 2019. Samples were collected using a hand corer with the area of 0.002 m2 pushed into sediments up to 5 cm depth. Three to five subsamples from each corer were taken. The material was transferred to a series of benthic sieves with the mesh size of 1 mm, 0.5 mm, and 32 μm respectively. For washing filtered sea water (through 40 μm gauze) was gently poured over the samples. The samples were fixed with 4% formaldehyde buffered with sea water and subsequently stained with a mixed solution of 10 ml of pure ethanol and 0.1 g of "Rose Bengal" (3 drops per 100 ml of sample) prepared in advance. The samples were transferred to the laboratory for identification and quantification. The taxonomic analysis was carried out at the microscope “MBS-10” with maximum magnification of 100x.