Learning About all Aspects of the St. Lawrence

Since 2015, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been financially supporting non-governmental organizations to help them collect, digitize, map and disseminate data on the St. Lawrence and its shorelines.

Initially, the study area extended from Montréal to Anticosti Island. It now includes sectors situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The data collected are biological, cultural, social and economic. The goal is to facilitate the identification of priority sites for protection, mainly because they are important to coastal communities.

The data collected will be integrated into a system so that they can be mapped. They will be used as a basis for management and decision-making, for the government and Indigenous communities, environmental emergency response services and managers of coastal infrastructures.

Indigenous groups, such as the Agence Mamu Innu Kaikusseht (AMIK), the Mi’gmaq Maliseet Aboriginal Fisheries Management Association (MMAFMA) and the Huron-Wendat receive financial assistance from the Department that enables them to structure their data on the marine environment and develop their geomatics capabilities. The St. Lawrence Global Observatory (SLGO) also receives financial support to add new socio-economic and biological data on the St. Lawrence to its catalogue available at ogsl.ca/en. This year, the Gespe’gewaq Mi’gmaq Resource Council (GMRC) and two research teams from the Université du Québec à Rimouski have been added to the list of supported organizations.

This collaboration with the organizations will continue until 2020.

Sylvie Sirois
Ecosystem Management