Microbes and meiofauna in most marine soft sediments are either not or very poorly known, so there are very few data on these assemblages and macrofauna are still generally considered good indicators of environmental stress or change. They are diverse, represent various life-histories, modes of dispersal, trophic levels, etc. In addition, there are data on their patterns of variation, their responses to different forms of disturbance are known and they show similar responses at different levels of taxonomic resolution (Warwick, 1988). They form an important component of the estuarine food-web,
supporting commercial and non-commercial species. They therefore represent an ideal assemblage to measure
environmental change and will continue to be used to represent an important biological component of soft sediments. Understanding how different components of benthos respond to changes in properties of sediments is therefore essential in determining how much, if any, redundancy there is in this system and how much impacts on the sediments themselves are tolerated by the fauna. From this study it is clear that such experiments need replication at multiple scales and across
multiple habitats before any general responses will be identified.