Every year thousands of Common Scoters (Melanitta nigra) are overwintering on the shallow sandbanks in front of the Belgian coast. This has already led to several international protective measures, a.o. the RAMSAR convention. The species diversity of the macrobenthos of the middle coast (Stroombank and Balandbank) does not differ from that of the western coast (Potje, Broersbank and Den Oever). In both cases, the most dominant groups are Polychaeta and Bivalvia. The middle-coast benthos is poorer in diversity and density than the west-coast benthos. Two bivalves, Spisula subtruncata and Macoma baltica (important food source for the Common Scoter according to literature) are well represented. Further research will be focused on the growth, production, recruitment (i.e. population dynamics) of these -for the ecosystem important- Bivalvia.
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