Fisheries and Oceans Canada

The 2019 amended Fisheries Act (FA) contains a provision that will require DFO to have a public facing Registry to provide public access to records relating to fish and fish habitat protection and pollution prevention, including: • Ministerial agreements • Standards and Codes of practice •...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is responsible for licensing all aquaculture facilities in British Columbia. The aquaculture licence and conditions of licence are designed to ensure the sustainable operation and development of the aquaculture industry. The following lists contain details related to...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO’s) Pacific Aquaculture Regulations and Conditions of Licence for aquaculture in B.C. require licence holders to take various fish escape prevention measures, including maintaining infrastructure in a manner to prevent the escape of farmed fish into the...

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a global, satellite-based and terrestrial-based ship tracking system that uses shipborne equipment to remotely track vessel identification and positional information and is typically required on vessels of 300 gross tonnage or more on an international...

PURPOSE: Eastern Beaufort Sea beluga whales form one of the largest summering aggregations of the species in the Mackenzie Estuary. In 2010, the Tarium Niryutait Marine Protected Area (TNMPA) was designated to protect beluga whales and their habitats As a part of ongoing ecological monitoring...

Bottom dissolved oxygen time series at the 3 fixed stations and 46 stations, grouped into transects, of the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program (AZMP) under the Quebec region responsibility. The mean bottom dissolved oxygen of the last ten years are displayed as 2 layers, one for the June survey...

Mean zooplankton biomass (g/m³) at the 46 stations grouped into Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program (AZMP) transects under Quebec region responsibility. Mean zooplankton wet weights of the last ten years are displayed as 4 layers in june (2013-2022, 2020 not sampled) and 4 layers in november...

Kernel density estimation (KDE) utilizes spatially explicit data to model the distribution of a variable of interest. It is a simple non-parametric neighbour-based smoothing function that relies on few assumptions about the structure of the observed data. It has been used in ecology to identify...

A research survey of scallops (mainly sea scallop Placopecten magellanicus, but also Icelandic Scallop Chlamys islandica) using a dredge was carried out by DFO (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) every 1 or 2 years since 1992 in the Magdalen Islands (fishing area 20). The main objective of this...

Bottom temperature time series at the 3 fixed stations and 46 stations, grouped into transects, of the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program (AZMP) under the Quebec region responsibility. The mean bottom temperature of the last ten years are displayed as 2 layers, one for the June survey...

Bottom salinity time series at the 3 fixed stations and 46 stations, grouped into transects, of the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program (AZMP) under the Quebec region responsibility. The mean bottom salinity of the last ten years are displayed as 2 layers, one for the June survey (2014-2023, 2020...

Chlorophyll-a (mg/m2) time series at the 3 fixed stations and 46 stations, grouped into transects, of the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program (AZMP) under the Quebec region responsibility. The mean integrated chlorophyll-a data (0-100 m) of the last ten years are displayed as 2 layers, one for...

Marine mammal predator control is governed by the Marine Mammal Regulations under the Fisheries Act. Records of marine mammal mortalities are maintained and results reported publicly. Additional licences can be obtained for control of other species. Fisheries and Oceans Canada works with industry...

Data from the analysis of sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity, bottom temperature, and bottom salinity, over the Gulf of Maine and Scotian Shelf, for 23 CMIP6 models. The analysis includes an evaluation of CMIP6 model performance for the CMIP6 historical (1950-2014) experiment. Future...

Since 2005, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been collecting monitoring data for aquatic invasive species (e.g. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/8d87f574-0661-40a0-822f-e9eabc35780d, https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/503a957e-7d6b-11e9-aef3-f48c505b2a29,...

Significant Benthic Areas are defined in DFO's Ecological Risk Assessment Framework (ERAF) as "significant areas of cold-water corals and sponge dominated communities", where significance is determined "through guidance provided by DFO-lead processes based on current knowledge of such species,...

The Scotian Shelf population of northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) is listed as Endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. Partial critical habitat was identified for this population in the Recovery Strategy first published in 2010 (Fisheries and Oceans Canada 2016), and three...

In 2012 and 2013, Fisheries and Oceans Canada surveyed the benthos in two areas closed to bottom contact fishing, the Narwhal Overwintering and Coldwater Coral Zone (now the Disko Fan Conservation Area, DFCA), and the Hatton Basin Voluntary Coral Protection Zone (now the Hatton Basin Conservation...

A benthic imagery survey was conducted along the Eastern Scotian Slope in June 2018 to collect data in support of a Strategic Program for Ecosystem-Based Research and Advice project to evaluate the effectiveness of the Lophelia Coral Conservation Area and identify new areas of importance for...

The Species at Risk (SAR) Program is responsible for carrying out DFO’s mandate under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) to protect, recover and conserve all listed aquatic SAR in Canada. As part of this mandate, this spatial database has been developed to identify areas in which aquatic species...