Harbor Seal Breeding and Feeding Areas in the St. Lawrence Region

A geospatial dataset documents harbor seal breeding and feeding areas in the Saguenay Fjord, Estuary, and Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was compiled by Fisheries and Oceans Canada from a literature review of documents published between 1968 and 2001. The data is available in multiple formats including SHP, ESRI REST, and CSV.

Use Cases

• Map harbor seal breeding and feeding areas to analyze habitat overlap with shipping lanes or fishing zones.
• Conduct a temporal analysis of seal habitat using the 1968-2001 document review period as a historical baseline.
• Integrate the geospatial features with other marine datasets for regional conservation planning in the Saguenay Fjord, Estuary, and Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Strengths

• Compiled by the authoritative government agency Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
• Sourced from a literature review spanning 33 years of documents from 1968 to 2001.
• Provides geospatial data in multiple standard formats (SHP, ESRI REST, CSV) for flexibility.

Limitations

• Data is based on a literature review ending in 2001, which may not reflect current harbor seal distributions.
• The underlying sample size or number of documented locations is unknown.
• Lacks detailed attribute columns describing habitat characteristics or seal population counts.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Literature review of scientific documents, personal communications, and surveys.

Time Range

Documents reviewed cover 1968 to 2001.

Freshness

The metadata was last updated in March 2026, but the core data is historical (1968-2001).

Geography

Saguenay Fjord, the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.