Benthic fauna was collected in 1976–1979, with a small bottom sampler and a dredge, from areas of up to 12 nautical miles off the Pomeranian Bay coast of theWolin Island and off Ustka in the central part of the Polish Baltic coast. Because the sampling devices used scooped the surficial sediment layer only, adult infaunal forms were not retrieved. The animals washed out from the sediment were separated on an 0.3 mm mesh size gauze. The small mesh size of the screening material resulted in a high proportion of juvenile representatives of most macrofaunal taxa in the samples and allowed to reveal the presence of small-bodied species not reported by other studies conducted with the use of a 1 mm mesh size sieves. The sieve mesh size was one of the reasons why the number of macrofaunal taxa found in this study was higher than reported by other authors. The dredge made it possible to collect representatives of taxa capable of evading grabs, which contributed to a longer list of species as well. The macrobenthic taxa found were much more abundant in the Pomeranian Bay than off Ustka (central Polish coast). It was only Streptosyllis websteri, fairly abundant off Ustka, that was recorded sporadically in the Pomeranian Bay.

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