CORAMM aims to improve our knowledge of the impacts of high suspended sediment loads and drill cuttings on cold water coral communities. The project is multidisciplinary in approach, with sedimentologists, biologists, modellers and representatives from StatoilHydro all involved in furthering the current understanding of these ecosystems. CORAMM has 4 workpackages: WP1 concentrates on the development of novel video and image analysis tools to enable a better and faster evaluation of Lophelia pertusa community structure and health status. WP2 assembles and further develops sensor systems for environmental monitoring with special emphasis on particle dynamics. These systems can be used as autonomous stand-alone units or can be linked to the internet. WP3 carries out specific experiments with live coral colonies to elucidate and predict the effect of different particle size and microbial composition. WP4 will build advanced ecosystem models for cold water corals and use a physiology- based approach to predict the effect of different sediment loads on the performance of cold water corals. Here, we present the outcome of the first 18 months of research.