Canada's designated alternate ballast water exchange areas

Canada's designated alternate ballast water exchange areas is an open dataset from Transport Canada with 11 files (HTML, ESRI REST, PDF, FGDB/GDB); catalogue record updated 2026-03-24. On CanQuery you can follow the original downloads. Files are available in English and French.

This data is intended to identify Canadian Alternate Exchange Areas described in https://tc.canada.ca/en/marine-transportation/marine-safety/list-canada-s-designated-alternate-ballast-water-exchange-area-fresh-waters-tp-13617e-2021. The data is not intended for navigation purposes. According to Canada’s Ballast Water Regulations, if your vessel enters waters under Canadian jurisdiction from somewhere other than the U.S. waters within the Great Lakes Basin, and it cannot conduct a ballast water exchange in the areas set out in paragraphs 14(1)(a) and (b) of the regulations, then it will have to conduct a ballast water exchange in one of the areas listed below: -Gulf of St. Lawrence -Atlantic Canada-Western Canada -Canadian Eastern Arctic -Canadian Western Arctic: If you bring your vessel to a Canadian port, offshore terminal or anchorage area in the Western Arctic ballast water must be exchanged in an area as far away from shore as possible, where the water is more than 100 meters deep. Legal Constraints: Users should be aware that the polygons depicting ballast water exchange areas are intended for illustration only and should not be used for navigational or legal purposes.

Publisher

Transport Canada

Resources

11

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-03-24