Fisheries and Oceans Canada

A global decline in seagrass populations has led to renewed calls for their conservation as important providers of biogenic and foraging habitat, shoreline stabilization, and carbon storage. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) occupies the largest geographic range among seagrass species spanning a...

Kelp features were taken from digitized survey source fieldsheets produced by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS). The area covered by this dataset encompasses various surveyed areas along the western coast of North America in British Columbia coastal waters. CHS has an extensive collection...

The shallow, coastal regions of the world’s oceans are highly productive ecosystems providing important habitat for commercial, forage, endangered, and iconic species. Given the diversity of ecosystem services produced or supported by this ecosystem, a better understanding of its structure and...

Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) are areas within Canada's oceans that have been identified through formal scientific assessments as having special biological or ecological significance when compared with the surrounding marine ecosystem. Failure to define an area as an...

CHS NONNA data has been updated: May 29, 2024 The Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) offers a complete inventory of bathymetric data free to the general public for non-navigational use called 'CHS NONNA' for the 'NON-NAvigational' purpose of the data. The product is available in a spatial...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has worked with partners and ocean users to develop a draft conservation network plan for the Scotian Shelf-Bay of Fundy Bioregion. This work led to the 2017 draft conservation network plan. The draft plan was updated after targeted consultations from 2021 to...

Daily sea surface temperature and salinity observations have been carried out at several locations on the coast of British Columbia since the early part of the 20th century. Observations started at the Pacific Biological Station (Departure Bay) in 1914; 11 stations were added in the mid-1930s and...

This dataset was designed for Environment and Climate Change Canada's (ECCC) National Environmental Emergencies Center (NEEC) for oil spill preparedness and response. The polygons of this layer were selected from the surface geodatabase of coastal ecosystems from the UQAR-MPO project Mapping...

This shapefile dataset was designed using polygons extracted from the Cartography of Coastal Ecosystems of Maritime Quebec geodatabase (2022, Laboratory for Dynamics and Integrated Management of Coastal Zones, Fisheries and Oceans Canada), described in the paragraph below. It consists of polygons...

Water temperature and water level are significant environmental factors affecting ecology of anadromous fish. Large-scale freshwater monitoring networks remain sparse, yet environmental protocols rely heavily on water temperature and water levels to assist decision making on river closures. Our...

The Fieldnotes dataset represents anticipated locations of science field research and monitoring to be conducted throughout the year by Fisheries and Oceans Canadas' Pacific Science team and collaborators in the Northeast Pacific and Arctic oceans, and in the coastal and interior waters of...

This project was completed by the Shellfish Section in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), in collaboration with industry partners. The Coastal Environmental Baseline program supported the Placentia Bay portion of project work for an ongoing...

This project was completed by the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program (Coastal and Freshwater Ecology Section) in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The nearshore fish and invertebrate community was sampled annually in Placentia Bay at 14 sites...

This project was completed by the Groundfish Section in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). From 2018 to 2020, 14 year-round, acoustic receivers were deployed in Placentia Bay as a part of the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program to form 4 gates:...

This project was completed by the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program (Coastal and Freshwater Ecology Section) in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). From 2020-2023, there were semi-annual deployments and retrievals of 3 moored CTDs in the bay....

This project was completed by the Pelagics Section in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). As part of the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program, a historical research gillnet program was reinitiated in Placentia Bay. Four local fishers each set...

This project was completed by the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program (Coastal and Freshwater Ecology Section) in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). From 2018 to 2022 baseline biological and physical data were collected in Placentia Bay using...

This project was completed by the Productive Capacity group (Coastal and Freshwater Ecology Section) in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). American lobster (Homarus americanus) is a commercially important decapod crustacean species along the east...

This project was completed by the Salmonids Section in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The Coastal Environmental Baseline Program has supported efforts in 2018 and 2019 of tagged Atlantic salmon smolts leaving the Bay de L’eau River and Rushoon...

A Conservation Unit (CU) is a group of wild Pacific salmon sufficiently isolated from other groups that, if extirpated, is very unlikely to recolonize naturally within an acceptable timeframe, such as a human lifetime or a specified number of salmon generations. Holtby and Ciruna (2007)...