Activities

Benthos monitoring is now established as an important part of most European marine monitoring and surveillance programmes.
The traditional way to sample the marine environment is to place probes, or sensors in the water or in the sea bed and directly measure physical and chemical variables such as:
temperature, salinity, conductivity, density, light attenuation, Secchie depth, fluorescence, oxygen saturation, pH, alkalinity.
Samples for chemical analysis are usually taken with water bottles or pumping systems and are taken to laboratories, such as the Marine Ecology Laboratory, for further analysis of the nutrient content, such as phosphate, nitrate, ammonium, silicate and many others.
The same procedures are carried out in respect of contaminants and toxicants in sea water. The analysis of sediments is still in the progress of further scientific development.

Environmental Monitoring: Function and Purpose