Waved Whelk Commercial Catches in the St. Lawrence Estuary and Gulf

Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Quebec region collects biological data on the commercially exploited waved whelk (Buccinum undatum) from 1987 to the present. The dataset includes metadata, sample weight, shell height, sex, and the number of specimens measured. It provides spatio-temporal coverage for stock assessment and demographic analysis in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Use Cases

• Analyze shell height and sex distributions to assess population structure and maturity of the waved whelk stock.
• Track changes in sample weight over time to monitor growth patterns and potential fishery impacts.
• Use the number of specimens measured per sample to evaluate sampling effort and density estimates across fishing areas.

Strengths

• Data collection spans from 1987 to the present, offering a long-term time series for trend analysis.
• Includes multiple biological variables per sample, such as shell height, sex, and sample weight.
• Sourced from a specialized government program (DFO) focused on commercial fisheries data.

Limitations

• Specific data points like vessel information and precise capture dates are simplified or excluded to protect confidentiality, limiting granular spatio-temporal analysis.
• Entries with only one vessel in a fishing area for a given year are excluded, which may introduce sampling bias.
• The exact number of rows and columns is unknown, making it difficult to assess the dataset's scale and completeness.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Quebec region.

Collection Method

Collected at wharf or at sea by specialized DFO staff as part of the commercial catches sampling program.

Time Range

1987 to present.

Freshness

Data is updated to the present, with a last platform update recorded in March 2026.

Geography

Estuary and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.