Shellfish harvest area quality – Status of shellfish harvest areas, Canada

The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) program provides data and information to track Canada's performance on key environmental sustainability issues. If unsafe bacterial levels are measured or if shoreline investigations show pollution concerns, Environment and Climate Change Canada makes classification recommendations to its Canadian Shellfish Sanitation Program partners. Fisheries and Oceans Canada opens or closes harvest areas based on those recommendations. The fecal coliform levels in marine waters of shellfish harvest areas are monitored to ensure that shellfish are safe for human consumption. The indicator reflects the quality of, and the extent of bacterial contamination in, marine coastal waters where shellfish are harvested. The indicator tracks the proportion of harvest area that is open as a coarse measure of the quality of marine coastal water. Information is provided to Canadians in a number of formats including: static and interactive maps, charts and graphs, HTML and CSV data tables and downloadable reports. See the supplementary documentation for the data sources and details on how the data were collected and how the indicator was calculated.

Supplemental Information

Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators - Home page:

http://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=En