At CIMA (Atlantic Center for Environmental Research, S.L.), we want to show you what we do—both in our offices and beyond.

On this page, you’ll find a series of short videos called "Things We Do at CIMA", which will help explain what we do and how we do it. All to bring you closer to the world of Marine Biology and Oceanography.

– «Things We Do At CIMA» #5: Sediment Cores:

Do you remember the video about the “triado”? In it, we explained how we separate organisms from a benthicsample, specifically from a sandy seabed.

In this new video, we want to show you how we collect these samples.

If we are studying a discharge zone, for example, we collect samples at the outfall and at increasingly distant points. This allows us to assess the impact and dispersion of the discharges.

To collect samples, we dive and insert corers (PVC tubes) into the sandy seabed at sampling sites. These corers have a specific volume: 4.5 cm internal diameter and are pushed 30 cm into the sand. This ensures we always collect the same sediment volume to study the meiofauna present.

Why do we do this?

Analyzing the diverse populations and their concentrations at varying distances helps us understand how the studied outfall’s discharges are affecting the environmental quality of the waters.