AIS NL Biofouling Species Fisheries and Oceans Canada's (DFO) National Marine Biofouling Monitoring Program conducts annual field surveys to monitor the introduction, establishment, spread, species richness, and relative abundance of native and some non-native species in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Region since 2006. Standardized monitoring protocols employed by DFO's NL, Maritimes, Gulf, and Quebec regions include biofouling collector plates deployed from May to October at georeferenced intertidal and shallow subtidal sites, including public docks, and public and private marinas and nautical clubs. Initially, (2006-2017), the collectors consisted of three 10 cm by 10 cm PVC plates deployed in a vertical array and spaced approximately 40 cm apart, with the shallowest plate suspended at least 1 m below the surface to sample subtidal and shallow intertidal species (McKenzie et al 2016a). Three replicate arrays were deployed at least 5 m apart per site. Since 2018, collector networks have been modified to improve statistical replication, including up to 10 individual collectors deployed per site at 1 m depth and at least 5 m apart (as above) from May to October. Since 2006, seven invasive biofouling organisms have been detected in Newfoundland and Labrador harbours, marinas and coastal areas. Should be cited as follows: DFO Newfoundland and Labrador Region Aquatic Invasive Species Marine Biofouling Monitoring Program. Published March 2024. Coastal and Freshwater Ecology, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Reference: Tunicates Vase tunicate (Ciona intestinalis) 2012 The Vase tunicate, is a high impact solitary invader and was first detected by DFO in 2012 on the Burin Peninsula at Ship Cove and Little Bay, Placentia Bay. Various mitigation measures (McKenzie et al. 2016b) contained this invasive tunicate to a small area for six years within Placentia Bay. First detected in Fortune Bay as an established population in 2019, increasing reports of the Vase tunicate have been made along the south coast of Newfoundland. The data provided here indicates the detections of this AIS in coastal NL. From 2018-2022, the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program provided additional support to enhance sampling efforts in Placentia Bay.

The Urban Atlas provides pan-European comparable land use and land cover data for Functional Urban Areas (FUA). The Street Tree Layer (STL) is a separate layer from the Urban Atlas 2012 LU/LC layer produced within the level 1 urban mask for each FUA. It includes contiguous rows or a patches of trees covering 500 m² or more and with a minimum width of 10 meter over "Artificial surfaces" (nomenclature class 1) inside FUA (i.e. rows of trees along the road network outside urban areas or forest adjacent to urban areas should not be included). Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

DFO’s Oceans and Coastal Management Division (OCMD) in the Maritimes Region has updated its fisheries landings maps for 2010–2014. These maps will be used for decision making in coastal and oceans management, including mitigating human use conflicts, informing environmental emergency response operations and protocols, informing Marine Stewardship Council certification processes, planning marine protected area networks, assessing ecological risks, and monitoring compliance and threats in coral and sponge closures and Marine Protected Areas. Fisheries maps were created to identify important fishing areas using aggregate landed weight (kg) per 2 x 2-minute grid cell for selected species/gear types. This dataset has been filtered 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 were withheld from these unit areas to protect the identity or activity of individual vessels or companies. Maps were created for the following species/gear types: 1. Atlantic Halibut 2. Bluefin Tuna 3. Bottom Longline Groundfish 4. Bottom Trawl Groundfish 5. Cod 6. Cod, Haddock, Pollock 7. Cusk 8. Dogfish 9. Flatfish 10. Gillnet Groundfish 11. Greenland Halibut 12. Groundfish 13. Groundfish (quarterly composites Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) 14. Hagfish 15. Herring 16. Large Pelagics 17. Mackerel 18. Monkfish 19. Offshore Clam 20. Offshore Lobster 21. Grey Zone Lobster 22. Other Crab 23. Other Tuna 24. Pollock 25. Porbeagle, Mako and Blue Shark 26. Red Hake 27. Redfish 28. Scallop 29. Scallop (quarterly composites Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) 30. Sculpin 31. Sea Urchin 32. Shrimp 33. Silver Hake 34. Skate 35. Snow Crab 36. Squid 37. Swordfish 38. White Hake 39. Wolffish

Akkeri og baujur og áætlaðar staðsetningar fyrir búnað í sjókvíaeldi.

The data in this dataset represent an amalgamation of sea turtle sighting, stranding, and entrapment events, mainly near Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada. This document summarises the detection events data for Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), Loggerhead (Caretta caretta), and Green (Chelonia mydas) Turtles that has been collected from opportunistic and systematic survey sources, plus stranding and entrapment records, in the waters of NL from 1946 to 2023. To a much lesser extent there are also detection records for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Scotian Shelf, and northeastern U.S. waters. These detection records are mostly derived from opportunistic reports, so there are rarely data for a report that includes measures of the observer effort expended to make the detection, and rarely associated imagery. During DFO aerial surveys there are measures of effort in most cases, enabling the turtle sightings reports to be used in habitat modelling (e.g., Mosnier et al. 2018). Most of the information variables (such as “Date”, “Latitude”, “Longitude”, “Number of Animals”) have been obtained from the detection report. In some cases data for variables such as “Location Reliability”, “ID Reliability”, “Platform”, and “Strand or Entrapment Outcome” were derived from interpretation of the comments associated with the report, if available. For description of the variables in the dataset see the Data Dictionary. References: Mosnier, A., Gosselin, J.-F., Lawson, J., Plourde, S., and Lesage, V. 2018. Predicting seasonal occurrence of leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in eastern Canadian waters from turtle and sunfish (Mola mola) sighting data and habitat characteristics. Can. J. Zool. 97: 464-478. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2018-0167

AIS NL Biofouling Species Fisheries and Oceans Canada's (DFO) National Marine Biofouling Monitoring Program conducts annual field surveys to monitor the introduction, establishment, spread, species richness, and relative abundance of native and some non-native species in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Region since 2006. Standardized monitoring protocols employed by DFO's NL, Maritimes, Gulf, and Quebec regions include biofouling collector plates deployed from May to October at georeferenced intertidal and shallow subtidal sites, including public docks, and public and private marinas and nautical clubs. Initially, (2006-2017), the collectors consisted of three 10 cm by 10 cm PVC plates deployed in a vertical array and spaced approximately 40 cm apart, with the shallowest plate suspended at least 1 m below the surface to sample subtidal and shallow intertidal species (McKenzie et al 2016a). Three replicate arrays were deployed at least 5 m apart per site. Since 2018, collector networks have been modified to improve statistical replication, including up to 10 individual collectors deployed per site at 1 m depth and at least 5 m apart (as above) from May to October. Since 2006, seven invasive biofouling organisms have been detected in Newfoundland and Labrador harbours, marinas and coastal areas. Should be cited as follows: DFO Newfoundland and Labrador Region Aquatic Invasive Species Marine Biofouling Monitoring Program. Published March 2024. Coastal and Freshwater Ecology, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Reference: Tunicates Golden star tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) 2006 The Golden star tunicate was the first invasive tunicate detected in NL waters. It was reported in Argentia by the US Navy around 1945. It was found in 2006 on wharf structures in Argentia, Placentia Bay during the first AIS survey (Callahan et al 2010). This colonial tunicate is recognized by it star shaped grouping of individuals within the colony. It is currently found in Placentia Bay, Fortune Bay, St. Mary’s Bay, Conception Bay and the west coast of NL. The data provided here indicates the detections of this AIS in coastal NL. From 2018-2022, the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program provided additional support to enhance sampling efforts in Placentia Bay.

This project was completed by the Pelagics Section in the Newfoundland and Labrador Science Branch of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). As part of the Coastal Environmental Baseline Program, a historical research gillnet program was reinitiated in Placentia Bay. Four local fishers each set fleets of standardized nets to catch herring for 6 weeks during the spring. The data collected was used to update a time series and provide advice at the herring stock assessment in October 2022.  This program was continued in the 22/23 fiscal year. Data collected from this program included gillnet catch rates, bycatch, temperature and biological (herring) samples; from which biological metrics such as length, weight, sex, maturity and age were measured. This record contains catch data for 2018 to 2021, as well as biological data from 2018.

The Oceans Act (1997) commits Canada to maintaining biological diversity and productivity in the marine environment. A key component of this is to identify areas that are considered ecologically or biologically significant. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science has developed guidance on the identification of Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) (DFO 2004) and has endorsed the scientific criteria of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for identifying ecologically or biologically significant marine areas as defined in Annex I of Decision IX/20 of its 9th Conference of Parties. These criteria were applied to the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Shelves Bioregion in two separate data-driven processes. The first process focused on the area north of the Placentia Bay-Grand Banks (PBGB) Large Ocean Management Area (LOMA) (DFO 2013). The second process focused on the PBGB area (DFO 2019), where EBSAs had previously been identified using a more Delphic approach (Templeman 2007). In both cases, an EBSA Steering Committee, comprised of experts in oceanography, ecosystem structure and function, taxa-specific life histories and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) guided the process by advising or aiding in the identification, collection, processing and analysis of data layers, as well as participating in the final selection of candidate EBSAs (Wells et al. 2017, Ollerhead et al. 2017, Wells et al. 2019). All information was compiled in a GIS and a hierarchical approach was used to review individual data layers and groupings of data layers. Peer review meetings were held for both processes, during which candidate EBSAs were reviewed and the final EBSAs were agreed upon and delineated. In the northern study area, a total of fifteen EBSAs were identified and described; three of these areas are primarily coastal areas; seven are in offshore areas; four EBSAs straddle coastal and offshore areas; and one is a transitory EBSA that follows the southern extent of pack ice. In the PBGB study area, fourteen EBSAs were identified in two different categories: seven based on coastal data and seven based on offshore data. In comparing the new PBGB EBSAs to those identified in 2007, nine of them overlap spatially and are based on similar features; however, there were some variations in the boundaries. Two of the EBSAs that were identified in 2007 were no longer considered EBSAs in 2017, but portions of both of these areas were captured in part by other EBSAs. Five new EBSAs were identified in areas not previously considered. References: DFO, 2004. Identification of Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Ecosystem Status Rep. 2004/006. DFO. 2013. Identification of additional Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) within the Newfoundland and Labrador Shelves Bioregion. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2013/048. DFO. 2019. Re-evaluation of the Placentia Bay-Grand Banks Area to Identify Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas . DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2019/040. Ollerhead, L.M.N., Gullage, M., Trip, N., and Wells, N. 2017. Development of Spatially Referenced Data Layers for Use in the Identification and Delineation of Candidate Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas in the Newfoundland and Labrador Shelves Bioregion. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2017/036. v + 38 p Templeman, N.D. 2007. Placentia Bay-Grand Banks Large Ocean Management Area Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas. Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2007/052: iii + 15 p. Wells, N.J., Stenson, G.B., Pepin, P., and Koen-Alonso, M. 2017. Identification and Descriptions of Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas in the Newfoundland and Labrador Shelves Bioregion. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2017/013. v + 87 p. Wells, N., K. Tucker, K. Allard, M. Warren, S. Olson, L. Gullage, C. Pretty, V. Sutton-Pande and K. Clarke. 2019. Re-evaluation of the Placentia Bay-Grand Banks Area of the Newfoundland and Labrador Shelves Bioregion to Identify and Describe Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2019/049. viii + 138 p.

The Permafrost Information Network (PIN) geotechnical borehole database combines existing database compilations into a standard structure. The standardized database was created to be accessible from the PIN web application as a data layer. Further information regarding data compilation can be accessed from the PIN web application.