Fisheries and Oceans Canada

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) Conditions of Licence for finfish aquaculture include requirements to minimize harm to wild fish that swim into facilities. Facility operators must also maintain an incidental catch log, which is a record of wild fish caught at the facility during harvest...

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.

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...

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...

Mortality at salmon aquaculture facilities is closely monitored. As in any population of wild or farmed animals, there are a number of causes leading to death. While in-depth diagnostic testing takes time, carcasses are routinely assigned to a number of defined categories which can help facility...

The endangered St. Lawrence Estuary (SLE) beluga population is in decline and has shown no signs of recovery despite multiple protection measures. Changes in prey availability and exposure to organohalogen contaminants have been proposed as potential factors limiting the its recovery. Studies on...

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...

Description: Seasonal climatologies for Zooplankton biomass in seven size categories were calculated for the period 1990-2019. The data used were a subset of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Institute of Ocean Sciences Zooplankton Database. This dataset is incomplete and is regularly updated...

Funded under DFO's Marine Conservation Targets Program, this optical imagery benthic survey captured 24 drift-camera transects from September 22-26, 2023 in the Quoddy Region of the lower, western Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada. The survey area includes Passamaquoddy Bay, the 'Head...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada requires operators of active marine finfish aquaculture sites in British Columbia to monitor for benthic (seabed) impacts. The benthic monitoring program is designed to limit the location, area and intensity of impact created by fish farms to the seabed and to support...

The Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) region has been conducting multispecies research vessel (RV) surveys using a stratified random survey design since the early 1970s. The DFO RV survey dataset represents the longest time series of species...

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...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO’s) conditions of licence for marine finfish aquaculture contain monitoring and intervention requirements to minimize the potential exposure of wild and farmed fish to sea lice. Licence holders must submit a Health Management Plan to DFO that includes sea lice...

CMIST is a peer-reviewed screening-level risk assessment tool for marine invasive species (Drolet et al. 2016). It is a short questionnaire that follows the invasion process from arrival to impact and is designed so an informed assessor can evaluate one species in an assessment area in...

Fisheries and Oceans Canada requires operators of active marine finfish aquaculture sites in British Columbia to monitor for benthic (seabed) impacts. The benthic monitoring program is designed to limit the location, area, and intensity of impact created by fish farms to the seabed and to support...

This report provides summary fish health data collected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) from randomly selected licensed marine facilities culturing salmon in British Columbia (BC). Results of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening are provided, as well as a list of the bacterial pathogens...

The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Pole to Pole (MBON P2P) effort seeks to develop a framework for the collection, use and sharing of marine biodiversity data in a coordinated, standardized manner leveraging on existing infrastructure managed by the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS;...