MariLim | Quality assurance & Co-operation | Employees & Qualifications | Assessment systems | Guidelines
MariLim
MariLim -Aquatic Research- was founded 1993 by Dipl.-Biol. Thomas Meyer. On the 1st January 2009 MariLim changed its company name to MariLim -Aquatic Research- GmbH, with the persistent executive board.
Since its foundation, MariLim has specialised on solving ecological problems of marine and limnic habitats. MariLim offers a broad spectrum of different services, in the fields of Aquatic Research and Investigations.
Quality assurance & Co-operation
Through a close co-operation between the MariLim and the clients, MariLim was able to assure a comprehensive professional and on schedule processing of projects, were the targeted experience exchange added a lot to the optimisation of the whole planning process.
MariLim's in-company quality assurance, which passes through a multi level assesment model, documents and verifies all project related results. Additionaly, during the completion of the assigned tasks, there is a regular assessment of the compiled findings.
Employees & Qualifications
Currently there are more than 20 permament employees at MariLim, as well as several freelancers. On the basis of state approved degrees the employees have additional qualifications and participate regularly in training courses, in order to assure the quality of products and surveys.
Furthermore, several of MariLim's employees are members of diverse national and international bodies. For example the Quality assurance biology, in line with the federation-countries-monitoring programm, and the participation at the UBA and QUASIMEME intercomparison programmes.
Assessment systems
Since 2003, MariLim is continuously working on projects, which deal with the implementation of the WFD in the coastal waters, for the quality components macrophytobenthos and macrozoobenthos. During these projects, an assessment system called MarBIT (MARine Biotic Index Tool) was developed for the macrozoobenthos of the Baltic Sea, and has been reviewed in several field tests. MarBIT was also tested for the zoobenthos of the North Sea and different habitats (mussel beds, soft bottom communities, phytal communitites, etc).
Starting from 2004 the assessment systems for macrophytes of the Baltic Sea were evaluated in different field tests. For the outer coastal waters this resulted in a restructured and revised version of the assessment system for macrophytes, which now is used in the Baltic Sea under the name BALCOSIS (Baltic Algae COmmunity analysis System). A monitoring guideline for BALCOSIS was submitted in the year 2008.
As one of the developers of assessment systems MariLim represents the federal states of Germany in the WFD Geographic Intercalibration Group for the Baltic Sea (Baltic GIG) and took over the lead of the group on the quality component macrozoobenthos. Further MariLim participates in the production of the relevant SOP procedures (Standard Operational Procedures) for macrozoobenthos and macrophytes in the context of the quality assurance in the BLMP programme and is in the chair of the working sub-group QA macrophytobenthos.
Guidelines
Since its establishment MariLim is involved in different programmes for the investigation and definition of guidelines in the context of the HELCOM program. In this lies the comprehensive experience of MariLim regarding the structure and function of the different ecological systems and the detailed knowledge on the occurrence of certain kings of indicators particularly concerning the shallow water of the Baltic Sea.
Proposals and monitoring programs for special navy protected areas in the Baltic Sea (BSPAs) were developed and converted, and formed the basis for the formulation of preservation goals for the habitat types into the appropriate NATURA 200 areas. As a subcontractor MariLim participated 2007 to compile a NATURA 2000-monitoring concept for the coastal-far range.