Fisheries and Oceans Canada

PURPOSE: This data relates to the Canadian Science Advice Secretariat (CSAS) Regional Science Advisory Process from the Limit Reference Point and Population Model Review of the Southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence Sea Scallop peer review meeting held on November 1-2, 2023. The SFAs 22 and 24 have...

Funded under DFO's Marine Conservation Targets Program, this optical imagery benthic survey documents the occurrence and estimated percent cover of the invasive colonial tunicate, Didemnum vexillum in seven drift-camera transects in the 'Head Harbour/West Isles Archipelago/The Passages'...

PURPOSE: To track juvenile Atlantic salmon densities. DESCRIPTION: Indices of freshwater production are derived annually from electrofishing surveys in the rivers of Nova Scotia flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Fixed site sampling for juvenile salmon has been conducted most...

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...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Maritime Science Branch has collected grain size data from sediment and water column samples using bottle samples, sediment cores, and sediment grabs as part of numerous research projects not only in the Atlantic provinces, but also worldwide. The data collected...

Description: Data on recreational boating are needed for marine spatial planning initiatives in British Columbia (BC). Vessel traffic data are typically obtained by analyzing automatic identification system (AIS) vessel tracking data, but recreational vessels are often omitted or...

Monitoring programs are an important component of Marine Protected Area (MPA) management, providing requisite information on the state of, and changes in, protected ecosystems. Monitoring is required to gauge the efficacy of MPAs towards their conservation objectives and provides information...

Description: This dataset contains layers of predicted occurrence for 65 groundfish species as well as overall species richness (i.e., the total number of species present) in Canadian Pacific waters, and the median standard error per grid cell across all species. They cover all seafloor habitat...

Localization and contact information of DFO offices. Find, search and locate DFO offices within Canada.

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...

Salmon have a complex hierarchical population structure extending from groups of salmon at individual spawning sites all the way up to taxonomic species. These independently functioning aggregates are defined as Conservation Units (CUs) in the Wild Salmon Policy. A stock management unit (SMU) is...

A goal of the Government of Canada’s Coastal Environmental Baseline Program (CEBP) is to amalgamate historic environmental data from high vessel traffic areas. An extensive DFO biological sampling program was conducted from 1980 to 1981 on Sturgeon and Roberts banks located on the outer Fraser...

This dataset is a compilation of numerous data files recovered as part of a data request in 2024 from a historical archive of DFO research data. Sediment and Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) samples were collected over more than a decade as part of Dr. Douglas Loring’s research program while...

Canadian tides and water level station information, benchmarks, observed water level data, and tidal predictions. The Canadian tide and water level data archive presently holds water level observations reported from over a thousand stations, with the earliest dating back to 1848. The number of...

Map of Canada showing locations of facilities selling nautical charts in both paper and digital formats.

Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) has made available all the publishable limits of modern day surveys whose data has been collected since 1989.

CHS offers 500-metre bathymetric gridded data for users interested in the topography of the seafloor. This data provides seafloor depth in metres and is accessible for download as predefined areas.

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...

These data sets provide information pertaining to shrimp and bycatch estimates associated with beam-trawling and trapping (2001-2002) in Clio Channel. Data sets were compiled and formatted by Meagan Mak. Abstract from report: As part of a project investigating possible modification of marine...

Funded under DFO's Marine Conservation Targets Program, this optical imagery benthic survey captured 16 drift-camera transects in the St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area (MPA - 4364 km2) and 2 coastal transects west of the MPA, Atlantic Canada from August 15-23, 2023. High-resolution still images...