Giant Scallop Commercial Catches in the St. Lawrence, 1985 to Present

Fisheries and Oceans Canada collects biological data on giant scallops from commercial catches in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence. The dataset includes shell height and count metadata for specimens measured from 1985 onward, offering relatively large spatio-temporal coverage. Data collection is performed by specialized DFO staff at wharf or at sea to support stock assessments.

Use Cases

• Modeling giant scallop population demographics based on shell height and count data.
• Analyzing long-term trends in scallop fisheries based on time-series data from 1985 to present.
• Assessing spatial distribution of catches based on the described fishing areas.
• Studying the impact of commercial fishing on scallop size structure.

Strengths

• Data covers a long time period from 1985 to present.
• Collection provides relatively large spatio-temporal coverage as described.
• Data is sourced from a specialized government agency (Fisheries and Oceans Canada).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data has been simplified and some entries excluded to protect confidentiality, which may affect granularity.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Sampling of commercial catches at wharf or at sea by specialized DFO staff.

Time Range

1985 to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-24 09:09:08.049748; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Estuary and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada