Grey seal distribution and abundance in the Estuary and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including Saguenay River

Grey seal distribution and abundance in the Estuary and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including Saguenay River is an open dataset from Fisheries and Oceans Canada with 4 files (ESRI REST, CSV, SHP); catalogue record updated 2026-03-24. On CanQuery you can open its CSV or Excel file as a table, filter, chart and export up to 10,000 rows as CSV and follow the original downloads. Files are available in English and French.

Data were collected during aerial surveys carried out at low tides in June and August 1994-1997, 2000 and 2001. June and August are respectively pupping and moulting seasons, when the haulout sites are intensively used by seals. Features in this layer show the Grey seal distribution and mean abundance for all aerial surveys (tables 4 and 6, figures 4 and 6 from Robillard et al. 2005). In the estuary, areas of high abundance have more than 25 individuals, areas of medium abundance have between 5 and 25 individuals and areas of low abundance have fewer than 5 individuals. In the Gulf, areas of high abundance have more than 70 individuals and areas of medium to low abundance have fewer than 70 individuals. Data are valid only during summer because Grey seals in the Estuary and northern Gulf migrate to the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in the fall. These seals will spend the winter on Sable Island, on the ice shelf in the Northumberland Strait or on neighboring islands. During the summer, in the Estuary and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, its distribution is not uniform between the different concentration areas identified, but it is similar between June and August. However, there are some…

Publisher

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Resources

4

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-03-24