Fisheries and Oceans Canada

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'...

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...

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...

In 1998, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) published an atlas called "Traditional Fisheries Knowledge for the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence". The document is composed of a series of maps that contain useful information primarily on nearshore fisheries and fish habitat in the eastern shore of New...

Marine Protected Areas require comprehensive monitoring to ensure objectives are achieved; however, monitoring natural ecosystems at scale is challenged by the biodiversity it aims to measure. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding holds promise to address this monitoring challenge. We conducted...

This dataset reports on lobster abundance and individual biological characteristics (size, sex, shell hardness, egg status), along with seabed substrate information, collected at various coastal sites in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Surveys were conducted over a 40-year period between 1982 and 2021....

This dataset includes metrics of seagrass productivity and resilience collected from field sites along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Field sites were located across a gradient of temperature and light conditions. Sampling was conducted monthly from May 2018 to July 2019. Seagrass...

The blue whale (Balaenopterus musculus) is a wide-ranging cetacean that can be found in all oceans, inhabiting coastal and oceanic habitats. In the North Atlantic, little is known about blue whale distribution and genetic structure, and if whether animals found in Icelandic waters, the Azores, or...

The data layer (.shp) presented is the result of an unsupervised classification method for classifying seafloor habitat on German Bank (off South West Nova Scotia, Canada). This method involves separating environmental variables derived from multibeam bathymetry (Slope, Curvature) and backscatter...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

Between 2001 and 2004 a descriptive and comparative investigation of the benthic macro-infauna in 17 pockmarks and 10 reference locations outside pockmarks in Passamaquoddy Bay-Bay of Fundy- was made. This dataset contains the locations of the grab samples for each pockmark in the study area,...

Records of marine mammal sightings (N = 4,572) collected by ASOs and submitted to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) regions between 1990-2022, across three DFO regions: the Arctic, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Maritimes. Methods for compilation and summary statistics are provided in the...

A derivative of DFO’s benthic species survey for the Strategic Program for Ecosystem-based Research and Advice (SPERA) (open data record ID: e736c0f0-b19e-4842-903d-28bfc756d48a), this benthic survey funded through the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network (CHONeII) looks at the presence/absence and...

The data in this layer represents habitat suitability of soft-shelled clams (Mya arenaria) in the DFO Maritimes region, and was developed using an interdepartmental approach. Substrate classification data as well as bathymetric data for the Region were used to identify potential habitat for...

This dataset contains the abundance (per m²) and the biomass (mg dry per m²) of macrofauna (≥ 500µm) in eelgrass and adjacent bare soft sediments, collected at sites in the Atlantic of Nova Scotia from 2009 to 2013. Cite this data as: Wong M.C. Data of Benthic invertebrates in seagrass and bare...

This layer details Important Areas (IAs) relevant to key cetacean species in the Strait of Georgia (SOG) ecoregion. This data was mapped to inform the selection of marine Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSA). Experts have indicated that these areas are relevant based upon their...

These data were created under DFO’s Strategic Program for Ecosystem-based Research and Advice - Aquatic Invasive Species Program: “Evaluation of the movement of marine infrastructure as a pathway for aquatic invasive species spread”. This geodatabase contains floating dock locations in coastal...