The monitoring collection is a joint project of Zoological Museum of Moscow University (ZMMU), Lomonosov Moscow State University Marine Research Center (LMSU MRC), and Nikolai Pertsov White Sea Biological Station of the Moscow State University (WSBS MSU). The collection's mission is to store zoological material retrieved in research involving the ecological monitoring of Arctic and Far East seas. The goal is a representative collection of these regions' invertebrates which could serve as the basis for scientific research, specialist training, and improvement of monitoring work, one which could become a reference for future research on long-term community dynamics. Created in 2014, the collection has been based in the Lomonosov building of MSU since 2019. As of 2021, part of the incoming material is fixed in ethanol and usable for genetic research. Since the monitoring collection exists to assist scientific research and student work, its materials can be requested by scientific institution employees and post-secondary instructors for temporary use by requests fitting the Memorandum on the use of the monitoring collection.