On invitation from the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Paco Cárdenas (Uppsala University, Sweden) has put together a team of taxonomists to work on the deep-sea sponges from the BIOICE (1991-2004) project, originally collected and pre-sorted by Ole S. Tendal in Copenhagen. Taxonomists present were Pilar Rios, Javier Cristobo, Christine Morrow, Joana R. Xavier, Celso Domingos and Paco Cárdenas

The work took place at the Sudurnes Science and Learning Center, in the small town of Sandgerði, Iceland, 8-19 Sept. Sponges occurred in 79% of the 1031 BIOICE stations around Iceland confirming that they are widely distributed and abundant around Iceland. A reference collection was produced. The hexactinnelid collection was almost fully identified by Joana and Celso, but there is still a lot of work left to sort and identify the demosponges.