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...

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...

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...

Acoustic telemetry is a widely used method in assaying behavioural dynamics in fishes. Telemetry tags are often surgically implanted in the coelom of the animal and are assumed to have minimal rates of post-release mortality and tag shedding. However, fish are capable expelling tags and...

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...

Estuaries are highly productive and diverse ecosystems that represent a geographic bottleneck between marine and freshwater systems. Estuaries have been identified as ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs) in Canada’s Pacific Region because of their importance for the...

We have updated and reviewed toxicity data for Emamectin benzoate (EMB) and Ivermectin (IVER), two in-feed drugs used to treat sea lice in farmed Atlantic salmon, and inferred new Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) using a deterministic approach or Species Sensitivity Distributions (SSDs)...

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...

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 •...

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...

Mortality at salmon aquaculture facilities is closely monitored. If the amount of dead fish at a farm exceeds thresholds outlined in conditions of licence, a mortality event is said to have occurred and must be reported to DFO within 24 hours of discovery. Facility managers and veterinarian(s)...

This report provides a summary of fish health events reported by aquaculture companies to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). A fish health event is any suspected or active disease that occurs within an aquaculture facility that requires the involvement of a veterinarian and warrants mitigation...