Created in 2005, Science Advisory Reports include traditional Stock Status Reports, Ecosystem Status Reports, and Habitat Status Reports. Moreover, management strategies, frameworks and guidelines on the assessment or evaluation on specific issues, impacts of human activities on ecosystem components as well as recovery assessments on a species or population, are also included in this series.

This series documents the status of different stocks of fish, invertebrates and marine mammals in Canada as well as some ecosystem and environmental issues. From 1993 to 1996, and 2003 to 2004, Stock Status Reports were numbered by year and sequential number (i.e.: 1993/001). For 1997 to 2002, the SSR numbering system functioned with a permanent alphanumeric identifier number designating first the taxonomic grouping and region, and second the stock number (i.e.: D0-01 (2002)).

This series documents the scientific basis for the evaluation of fisheries resources in Canada. As such, it addresses the issues of the day - in the time frames required for management - by providing progress reports on ongoing investigations. The research documents use scientific and technical terms and are published in the official language in which they are provided to the secretariat.

This series reports on human activities that may impact aquatic ecosystems or components of those ecosystems, including the nature of the activities, their extent, their interactions with ecosystem components, and interactions with other human activities on the same areas. Generally, the effects of fisheries on fish stocks were reported in the Stock Status Report series, with regard to their effects on the dynamics of the targeted stocks or bycatch. However, some types of fishing effects were more appropriately included in the HSR series.

In 2009, Fisheries and Oceans Canada published the Policy on Managing the Impacts of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas. To support the implementation of this policy, a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) process was initiated to: assess the distribution of fishing effort in Canada’s Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters from 2005-2014, evaluate the overlap between fishing effort and Significant Benthic Areas (SiBAs), and identify areas of potential conservation concern. Although Research Document 2018/15 (Koen-Alonso et al. 2018), detailing this work, has not been updated since publication, the methodology outlined within it is still used to generate updated fishing effort layers as new data becomes available. This record illustrates cumulative fishing effort in Canada’s Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters from 2005-2022, and is based on commercial logbook and vessel monitoring system (VMS) data. Fishing effort has been standardized into percentiles, whereby the top 20th percentile of intensity (cell values ≥20) represent cells containing the most intense fishing activities.

These are the results of the annual DFO survey of key fish stocks. This survey tracks Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s implementation of its Sustainable Fisheries Framework policies.