SOMLIT is a network of Marine Research Stations that monitors several parameters to qualify the surface water column of France’s coastal ecosystems. The stations are located in the eastern and western English Channel, the Bay of Biscay and the North-Western Mediterranean Sea.

SOMLIT’s quality approach was formalised in 2006-2007 with the aim of harmonising practices and procedures by referring to the ISO 17025: 2017 standard “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories”. SOMLIT’s quality system is based on this standard and applies to all team activities at each station from sampling (including the preparation of field trips) to integration in the network’s national database. A Quality Unit has been set up to guarantee the implementation and proper functioning of the quality approach throughout the network and year-round. It is composed of each station’s quality manager, the national quality manager and the national website/database manager. The Unit meets three times a year and carries out actions. Key actions include training, self-diagnosis (within each station) and cross-diagnosis (between stations), drafting and annual updating of the quality manual and the various procedures and analytical protocols, and inter-comparisons.