Fixed gear sentinel fisheries program - northern Gulf of St. Lawrence
In place since fall 1994, the sentinel fisheries program is the result of a collaboration between Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and Quebec and Newfoundland commercial fishermen's associations. Under this program, contracts are awarded by tender to fishermen’s associations to carry out fishing activities according to scientific protocols developed by DFO. The main objective of this survey is to collect data that will be used to calculate abundance indices for the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence Atlantic cod stock.
Description of fixed gears survey
The fixed gear sentinel fisheries of the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence are conducted in the sub-division 3Pn and the divisions 4R, 4S of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) using fixed gillnets or longlines (other fishing gears were also used at the start of the program). Fishing activities with nets must have a mesh size of 5 ½ inches (140mm) and are limited to a maximum of 6 to 20 nets depending on the region and capture and the target immersion time is between 19 to 24 hours. Longline fishing activities, for its part, must be carried out with traditional J #16 or C #12 hooks. The maximum number of hooks varies from 500 to 1000, depending on the catch, and the target immersion time is 4 to 6 hours. Data are collected by observers at sea or by technicians.
Data
For each fishing activity, the total catch is sorted and weighed by species. For each species other than Atlantic cod, the number of individuals caught is noted. Atlantic cod are then measured at the fork (cm). Other biological data such as weight (total, gonad, liver and stomach), age, sex and maturity can then be collected on a subsample of cod.
The biological data are divided into 4 files: a “Metadata” file containing set information, a “Catches” file containing catches per set for fish taxa, a “Carbio” file containing biological and morphometric measurements per individual, a “Freql” file containing the length frequency of fish.
The data collected as part of this program is available below. It is important to note, however, that 1) only traits deemed successful have been retained; 2) historical data may contain inaccuracies; 3) the most recent survey is not available for validation purposes.
Simple
- Date ( RI_367 )
- 2019
- Date ( RI_366 )
- 2019
- Status
- onGoing; enContinue RI_596
- Maintenance and update frequency
- asNeeded; auBesoin RI_540
- Keywords ( RI_525 )
-
- Gulf of St. Lawrence
- Keywords ( RI_530 )
-
- sentinel fisheries
- Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus Thésaurus des sujets de base du gouvernement du Canada ( RI_528 )
-
- Oceans
- Fish
- Fisheries management
- Marine biology
- Aquatic wildlife
- Aquatic ecosystems
- Classification
- unclassified; nonClassifié RI_484
- Use limitation
- Open Government Licence - Canada (http://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada)
- Access constraints
- license; licence RI_606
- Use constraints
- license; licence RI_606
- Spatial representation type
- vector; vecteur RI_635
- Metadata language
- eng
- Metadata language
- fra
- Character set
- utf8; utf8 RI_458
- Topic category
-
- Biota
- Begin date
- 1994
))
- Reference system identifier
- https://epsg.io/ / EPSG:4326
- Distribution format
-
-
CSV
(
unknown
)
-
CSV
(
unknown
)
- OnLine resource
-
Fixed Gear Map data
(
ESRI REST: Map Service
)
Web Service;ESRI REST;fra
- OnLine resource
-
Fixed Gear Map data
(
ESRI REST: Map Service
)
Web Service;ESRI REST;eng
- OnLine resource
-
Fixed gear sentinel fisheries program data
(
HTTPS
)
Dataset;ZIP;eng
- OnLine resource
-
Fixed gear sentinel fisheries program data
(
HTTPS
)
Dataset;ZIP;fra
- OnLine resource
-
Data dictionary
(
HTTPS
)
Supporting Document;CSV;eng,fra
- File identifier
- d82e5388-f241-4c27-875a-941a49ab70c8 XML
- Metadata language
- eng; CAN
- Character set
- utf8; utf8 RI_458
- Hierarchy level
- dataset; jeuDonnées RI_622
- Date stamp
- 2025-05-20T19:36:06.947Z
- Metadata standard name
- North American Profile of ISO 19115:2003 - Geographic information - Metadata
- Metadata standard version
- CAN/CGSB-171.100-2009
Overviews

Spatial extent
))
Provided by
