European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

Data collected within the EMBLAS-II "EU-UNDP Project 'Improving Environmental Monitoring in the Black Sea' (EMBLAS-II)" (http://emblasproject.org/). EMBLAS-II is co-financed by the European Commission (EC) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project implementation started on 1 April 2014 and ended on 31 May 2018, having the total duration of 50 months. The EMBLAS project is addressing the overall need for support in protection and restoring the environmental quality and sustainability of the Black Sea. The specific objectives are as follows: Improve availability and quality of Black Sea environmental data in line with the MSFD and Black Sea Strategic Action Plan (2009) needs; Improve partner countries' ability to perform marine environmental monitoring along MSFD principles, taking into account the Black Sea Diagnostic Report II recommendations on capacity building. The National Pilot Monitoring Studies (NPMS) and Joint Open Sea Survey (JOSS) Programme was developed within the framework of Project Activities. The NPMS-2016 was performed in period 2016.05.17 to 2016.05.21 in the North-Western shelf part of the Black Sea onboard the RV "Mare Nigrum". 30 samples of meiobenthos were taken during the National Pilot Monitoring Studies in 2016. 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. At two stations the samples were taken by Multicorer MARK II with 0.0075 m2 sampling area. 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. Sampling performed by S. Kovalishina (UkrSCES), I. Kulakova (IMB NANU).