Benthos from Baffin Bay Area: a photo catalogue

Many teams studying benthic biodiversity have faced the challenge of identifying collected specimens while they are at sea. The use of pictures is an efficient way to increase samples processing, while limiting wrong or incorrect identifications that can be done when many people are working on the same project at different times. This catalogue presents a non-exhaustive inventory of more than 750 taxa, most of them named to the species level, of benthic invertebrates recorded in Baffin Bay (Arctic) with a special attention paid to species recorded along the Southwest Greenland coast. It is designed to be an accurate tool for biologists to identify benthic invertebrates occurring in trawl/dredge samples, with the objective to decrease number of preserved samples and time spent on post-survey sample processing. It has proven particularly useful during the implementation of benthos monitoring on national fisheries assessment surveys as recently recommended by CAFF-CBMP (CAFF 2017) as a way to increase our knowledge of long-term and large-scale trends in Arctic benthos communities. The catalogue proposes original photos and drawings. A must for biologist studying benthos from Arctic waters!