Commercial Catches in the St. Lawrence Estuary and Gulf Since 1976

Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Quebec region maintains a commercial catches sampling program for stock assessment in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence. The program provides biological data on 24 commercially exploited fish and invertebrate species, collected at wharf or at sea. Data collection began in 1976 and offers relatively large spatio-temporal coverage.

Use Cases

• Assess population demography and structure for 24 species, including Atlantic cod and snow crab, using biological data from commercial catches.
• Analyze spatio-temporal trends in commercial catches for groundfish, pelagic fish, and marine invertebrate species in the St. Lawrence region.
• Support stock assessment models with biological sampling data collected by specialized DFO staff at wharf or at sea.

Strengths

• Covers a long-term time series of data collection starting from 1976 to the present.
• Includes biological data for 24 distinct commercially exploited fish and invertebrate species.
• Provides data with relatively large spatio-temporal coverage for the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Limitations

• Specific data volume, row count, column structure, and file size are not disclosed in the available description.
• Data is presented in HTML format, which may be less suitable for direct quantitative analysis compared to structured formats like CSV.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Quebec region.

Collection Method

Data collected at wharf or at sea by specialized DFO staff as part of a commercial catches sampling program.

Time Range

1976 to present.

Freshness

Dataset metadata indicates a last update in March 2026, suggesting active maintenance.

Geography

Estuary and the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.