Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures placed in European coastal waters and retrieved on a regular basis provide the sampling and data collection context to this second episode in season two of the LifeWatch ERIC podcasts. The ARMS research case that helped validate our ground-breaking Virtual Research Environment is presented by Katrina Exter of the Flanders Marine Institute and Matthias Obst from the University of Gothenburg, and concerns hard-bottom communities. To find out exactly what hard-bottom communities are, and why they are important for the resilience of marine ecosystems, grab some headphones and have a listen. Available now in streaming on the LifeWatch ERIC website, Apple, Google, Spotify and Amazon.