The Department of National Defence has designated Firing Practice and Exercise Areas off the coasts of Canada. Activities in these areas may include bombing practice from aircraft, air-to-air, air-to-sea or ground firing, and anti-aircraft firing, etc. In Atlantic Canada, the Nova Scotia Area includes sea area employments for sub-surface operations and firing exercises (FIREX). The Gulf of St. Lawrence Area, excluding the French territorial waters of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, includes sea area employments for sub-surface operations and underwater demolition training. For full details, see the Notices to Mariners, Section F, National Defence Military Notices, available online: https://www.notmar.gc.ca/publications/annual-annuel/section-f/f35-en.pdf. Legal Constraints: Users should be aware that the polygons depicting firing practice and exercise areas are intended for illustration only and should not be used for navigational or legal purposes.

Cartographic representations of Fisheries Management Areas (FMA)s in the Atlantic and Arctic Regions. Currently Published Fisheries Management Areas: Capelin Crab Herring Mackerel Salmon, Atlantic Scallop Shrimp Snow Crab Squid Each polygon feature class delineates the coordinates of a different series of FMAs. Shapes have been drafted based on a combination of sources including: the Atlantic Fisheries Regulations, Integrated Fisheries Management Plans, indigenous treaties, the bounds of the Territorial Sea, and other information made public on Fisheries and Oceans websites. Information from Variation orders and Conditions of License were also incorporated. The specific sources used to construct each feature class is listed in its metadata and direct links to public sources are included. The original documentation uses a diverse combination datums, or include coordinates with no listed datum. This data series has been projected into NAD83. Vertices in this dataset may differ from the original source documents to fix slivers, make areas congruent with coastlines, or align with other administrative boundaries. Changes made to the original areas in order to make drafting possible have been highlighted in the comments field in the attribute tables. Lines were first drafted as geodesics and vertices were added to approximate loxodromes using the Construct Geodesic Tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.9.8. As documentation is drafted, additional FMAs will be added to the dataset. Currently drafted FMAs my change and expand into currently unmapped areas as new information is incorporated. The feature classes produced as a part of this data series are cartographic representations of legal documents and are meant to be used for general reference in support of marine planning. Whenever there is a difference between the original written source documentation and this digital representation, the originals should be considered authoritative. Every effort has been made to ensure that these files are as accurate as possible but these feature classes are not intended to be used for navigation, legal interpretation or enforcement.

As part of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007'08 and 2008'09 activities, and related objectives of the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW), nations of the circumpolar Arctic have co-operated to produce a new bedrock geology map and related digital map database at a scale of 1:5 000 000. The map, released in north polar stereographic projection using the World Geodetic System (WGS) 84 datum, includes complete geological and physiographic coverage of all onshore and offshore bedrock areas north of latitude 60° north.

This dataset is part of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Shoreline Classification and Pre-Spill database. Shoreline classification data has been developed for use by the Environmental Emergencies Program of Environment and Climate Change Canada for environmental protection purposes. Marine and freshwater shorelines are classified according to the character (substrate and form) of the upper intertidal (foreshore) or upper swash zone (Sergy, 2008). This is the area where oil from a spill usually becomes stranded and where treatment or cleanup activities take place. The basic parameter that defines the shoreline type is the material that is present in the intertidal zone. The presence or absence of sediments is a key factor in determining whether oil is stranded on the surface of a substrate or can penetrate and/or be buried. This dataset contains thousands of linear shoreline segments ranging in length from 200 m and 2 km long. The entities represent the location of the segments and their geomorphological description. There exist further fields in the attribute table for this dataset. We are currently working on standardizing our shoreline segmentation datasets and the updated data will soon be uploaded to the catalog. Sergy, G. (2008). The Shoreline Classification Scheme for SCAT and Oil Spill Response in Canada. Proceedings of the 31stArctic and Marine Oil Spill Program Technical Seminar.Environment Canada, Ottawa, ON, Pp. 811-819.

Dataset of species/gear type commercial fisheries from 2014 to 2023 in the Eastern Canada Regions. Only fish harvested from the NL, Maritimes, Gulf, Quebec and Eastern Arctic regions are included (Species Sought). The data was obtained from Statistical Services, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and consists of commercial species/gear type landings data from 2014 to 2023 taken from Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Subareas 0, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and fished in the NL, Maritimes, Gulf, Quebec and Eastern Arctic regions. The layer was created by overlaying a 2 minute hexagonal grid (approx. 10km2 cell) on species/gear type commercial fisheries point data and summing the total landings by weight reported for each cell over the ten year period. Therefore, the value of each grid cell is equal to the total species/gear type landings in kg from 2014 to 2023 for the area, and may represent many fishing events from several vessels over the ten year period. All landings are from Canadian vessels and does not include information pertaining to international fishing vessels (i.e., St. Pierre). Individuals should exercise caution when interpreting this data. Data has not been altered and is mapped from the original logbook entry for each record prior to amalgamation. Data may contain errors such as inaccurate or nonviable coordinates, landed weights and/or species identification. For example, cases of fishing events reported in a NAFO Division with corresponding coordinates falling outside that particular NAFO Division or fishing events which appear to be located on a land mass due to rounding errors in the original entries. Such cases were excluded from the dataset. Only one location is given for each fishing event; therefore, a fishing activity that would normally cover a large area (i.e., trawling) is only shown in a single location. Some species may not include all records or locations where activity is taking place due to regional differences in permissions for mapping, or because the fishery is only partially georeferenced (e.g. Lobster). The locations/areas shown should only be used as an estimation of fishing intensity and a general guide of where particular species/gear type fishing occurs. This dataset has been privacy screened to comply with the Government of Canada's privacy policy. Privacy assessments were conducted to identify NAFO unit areas containing data with less than five vessel IDs, license IDs and fisher IDs. If this threshold was not met, catch weight locations have been withheld from these statistical areas to protect the identity or activity of individual vessels or companies. In some instances, permissions were obtained to map species or gears with a limited number of vessels, licenses, or fisher ids. The withheld areas are indicated by the unit area that has been removed and given a weight of -9999.

In 2021, the Canada Coast Guard (CCG) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada updated its administrative boundaries following the creation a new Arctic region. There are now 4 administrative regions in CCG (Western, Arctic, Central and Atlantic). DFO and Coast Guard Arctic Regions developed these regions in partnership with the people they serve; this important decision will lead to stronger programs and services to better meet the unique needs of our Arctic communities. DFO and CCG operations and research cover Canada's land and waters to the international boundaries (EEZ) and are in no way limited to the boundaries drawn in the map.

In 2021, the Canada Coast Guard (CCG) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) updated its administrative boundaries following the creation a new Arctic region.There are now 7 administrative regions in DFO (Pacific, Arctic, Ontario and Prairie, Quebec, Gulf, Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador). DFO and Coast Guard Arctic Regions developed these regions in partnership with the people they serve; this important decision will lead to stronger programs and services to better meet the unique needs of our Arctic communities.DFO and CCG operations and research cover Canada's land and waters to the international boundaries (EEZ) and are in no way limited to the boundaries drawn in the map.

Points, polylines and polygons where species and features have been found, harvested or detailed. Community Based Coastal Resource Inventory (CCRI) – Fisheries and Oceans Canada in conjunction with several Federal and Provincial agencies created, implemented, and managed a program which set out to develop a coastal resource inventory based on the traditional knowledge of local residents. Through partnerships with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Regional Economic Development (RED) Boards and other community based groups the project assembled a database containing several decade’s worth of local knowledge. The value of the information collected came through individual interviews with people who had extensive knowledge of the immediate geography and resource, having lived, worked and harvested the regions over a lifetime. This project ran from 1996 to 2007.

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 underrepresented in AIS data because they are not required to carry AIS tracking devices. Transport Canada’s National Aerial Surveillance Program (NASP) conducted aerial surveys to collect information on recreational vessels along several sections of the BC coast between 2018 and 2022. Recreational vessel sightings were modeled against predictor variables (e.g., distance to shore, water depth, distance to, and density of marinas) to predict the number of recreational vessels along coastal waters of BC. The files included here are: --A Geodatabase (‘Recreational_Boating_Data_Model’), which includes: (1) recreational vessel sightings data collected by NASP in BC and used in the recreational vessel traffic model (‘Recreational_Vessels_PointData_BC’); (2) aerial survey effort (or number of aerial surveys) raster dataset (‘surveyeffort’); and (3) a vector grid dataset (2.5 km resolution) containing the predicted number of recreational vessels per cell and predictor variables (‘Recreational_Boating_Model_Results_BC). --Scripts folder which includes R Markdown file with R code to run the modelling analysis (‘Recreational_Boating_Model_R_Script’) and data used to run the code. Methods: Data on recreational vessels were collected by NASP during planned aerial surveys along pre-determined routes along the BC coast from 2018 to 2022. Data on non-AIS recreational vessels were collected using video cameras onboard the aircraft, and data on AIS recreational vessels using an AIS receiver also onboard the aircraft. Recreational boating predictors explored were: water depth, distance to shore, distance to marinas, density of marinas, latitude, and longitude. Recreational vessel traffic models were fitted using Generalized Linear Models (GLM) R packages and libraries used here include: AED (Roman Lustrik, 2021) and MASS (Venables, W. N., Ripley, 2002), pscl package (Zeileis, Kleiber, and Jackman, 2008) for zeroinfl() and hurdle() function. Final model was selected based on the Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and the Bayes’ information criterion (BIC). An R Markdown file with code use to run this analysis is included in the data package in a folder called Script. Spatial Predictive Model: The selected model, ZINB, consist of two parts: one with a binomial process that predicts the probability of encountering a recreational vessel, and a second part that predicts the number of recreational vessels via a count model. The closer to shore and to marinas, and the higher the density of marinas, the higher the predicted number of recreational vessels. The probability of encountering recreational vessels is driven by water depth and distance to shore. For more information on methodology, consult metadata pdf available with the Open Data record. References: Serra-Sogas, N. et al. 2021. Using aerial surveys to fill gaps in AIS vessel traffic data to inform threat assessments, vessel management and planning. Marine Policy 133: 104765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104765 Data Sources: Recreational vessel sightings and survey effort: Data collected by NASP and analyzed by Norma Serra to extract vessel information and survey effort (more information on how this data was analyzed see SerraSogas et al, 2021). Bathymetry data for the whole BC coast and only waters within the Canadian EEZ was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani). The data layer was presented as a raster file of 100 meters resolution. Coastline dataset used to estimate distance to shore and to clip grid was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani), created by David Williams and Yuriko Hashimoto (DFO – Oceans). Marinas dataset was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani), created by Josie Iacarella (DFO – Science). This dataset includes large and medium size marinas and fishing lodges. The data can be downloaded from here: Floating Structures in the Pacific Northwest - Open Government Portal (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/049770ef-6cb3-44ee-afc8-5d77d6200a12) Uncertainties: Model results are based on recreational vessels sighted by NASP and their related predictor variables and not always might reflect real-world vessel distributions. Any biases caused by the opportunistic nature of the NASP surveys were minimized by using survey effort as an offset variable.

Fetch is a proxy for wind-wave action and exposure. Estimates of fetch over a total of 39,938 km of the BC coastline were calculated at 50 m intervals, yielding 799,220 near shore fetch points. Fetch was calculated for five regions in Pacific Canada: Haida Gwaii (HG), North and Central Coast (NCC), Queen Charlotte and Johnstone Straits (QCS), Salish Sea (SoG), and West Coast Vancouver Island (WCVI). For all regions, a bearing interval of 5 degrees was used to generate fetch lines for each point along the shoreline, resulting in 72 fetch lines per point. A maximum fetch distance of 200 km was used to ensure the barrier effect of Haida Gwaii was captured. Supplementary information provided includes the fetch geometry calculator script and user guide (Gregr 2014) and a report on the fetch processing objectives, process, and results (Gregr 2015).