FluWatch is Canada's national surveillance system that monitors the spread of flu and flu-like illnesses on an on-going basis.Activity Level surveillance is a component of FluWatch that provides an overall assessment of the intensity and geographical spread of laboratory-confirmed influenza cases, influenza-like-illness (ILI) and reported outbreaks for a given surveillance region. Activity Levels are assigned and reported by Provincial and Territorial Ministries of Health. A surveillance region can be classified under one of the four following categories: no activity, sporadic, localized or widespread.For a description of the categories, see the data dictionary resource. For more information on flu activity in Canada, see the FluWatch report.(https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/flu-influenza/influenza-surveillance/weekly-influenza-reports.html)Note: The reported activity levels are a reflection of the surveillance data available to FluWatch at the time of production. Delays in reporting of data may cause data to change retrospectively.

Monitoring programs are an important component of Marine Protected Area (MPA) management, providing requisite information on the state of, and changes in, protected ecosystems. Monitoring is required to gauge the efficacy of MPAs towards their conservation objectives and provides information needed to evaluate the benefits provided to biodiversity from restricted access. However, in Nova Scotia’s coastal zone, there is a lack of baseline data, including fish diversity and community structure in macrophyte beds, which makes monitoring intractable. In 2017, the Eastern Shore Islands was identified as a coastal Area of Interest (AOI) for the potential establishment of an MPA. In 2018 an overview was conducted, detailing the spatial and temporal ecological attributes of the AOI. This information revealed a unique coastal ecosystem associated with a dense archipelago and relatively natural seascape. The abundance of plant and algal biogenic habitats within the area was assumed to host a diversity of juvenile fish species. The primary objective of this project is to begin development of a long-term biodiversity monitoring program in the Eastern Shore Islands and other coastal Areas of Interest for conservation planning. We propose implementing this program with the use of direct (beach seines, scuba diving, and stable isotope sampling) and indirect (environmental DNA - eDNA) sampling. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a useful tool to examine marine biodiversity in a non-invasive way, on a small spatial scale. eDNA can be easily collected and filtered and is becoming increasingly cost efficient to sequence and may be a useful marine protected area monitoring tool. While eDNA generally yields comparable results to traditional sampling techniques in terms of biodiversity captured, little is known on how eDNA signals fluctuate across years (or even days to weeks). We will compare species detections using eDNA metabarcoding to visual surveys (scuba and seine nets) to census eelgrass beds across the coastal zone, providing a baseline and time series of species diversity on which to base long-term monitoring. This project will generate inventories of eelgrass bed locations, and fish and invertebrate diversity within eelgrass beds. We additionally collect fish length distribution data to examine seasonal and inter-annual trends in size structure over time. The data generated from direct and indirect sampling will provide a comprehensive and ongoing catalog of species diversity and community structure in coastal eelgrass beds, as well as best-practices for sampling eDNA in the coastal environment.Cite this data as: Jeffery, N.W., Pettitt-Wade, H., Van Wyngaarden, M., and Stanley, R.R.E. Maritimes Coastal Biodiversity Monitoring Program – Beach Seining.Published: December 2023. Coastal Ecosystems Science Division, Maritimes region, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth NS. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/dbbcb23a-d018-4b70-b8ec-89997aded770

Oceanographic data from stationary moorings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program.

Oceanographic data from stationary moorings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program.

Oceanographic data from stationary moorings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program.

Oceanographic data from stationary moorings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program.

Oceanographic data from stationary moorings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program.

Locations of sampling stations for sensor strings deployed as part of the Centre for Marine Applied Research's (CMAR) Coastal Monitoring Program. Sensor strings record high-resolution temperature, dissolved oxygen, and intermittent salinity data at various depths, typically for several months. The dataset for each county is available at https://data.novascotia.ca/browse?Detailed-Metadata_Department=Fisheries+and+Aquaculture&tags=coastal+monitoring+program For more information on CMAR and the Coastal Monitoring Program go to: https://cmar.ca/reports/

Environmental Monitoring Stations (EMS) spatial points coverage for the Province by LOCATION TYPES. The following spatial layers reference this as a data source: 1. Environmental Monitoring - All Stations 2. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Air Monitoring (Ambient Air Site) 3. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Air Monitoring (Air Permit) 4. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Water Monitoring) 5. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Water Permits) 6. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Well) 7. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Observation Well) 8. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Spring)

As part of the development of a nationally-consistent sampling design within the Aquaculture Monitoring Program (AMP), this data reports mesozooplankton assemblages observed at nine coastal shellfish aquaculture sites, located across four DFO regions, with sampling across months, tide phases, and sampling locations. In most sites, strong spatial effects were observed, while tide effects were generally less important for structuring the mesozooplankton communities. Seasonality emerged as an essential factor to design an efficient monitoring program. This dataset represents the first large-scale Canadian coastal study using imaging technology for plankton taxonomic Identification.Cite this data as: Finnis, S., Guyondet, T., McKindsey, C.W., Arseneau, J., Barrell, J., Duhaime, J., Filgueira, R., Gallardi, D., Gaspard, D., Gibb, O., Goodwin, C., Hua, K., Macdonald, T., Milne, R., Lacoursière-Roussel, A. 2023. Guidance on sampling effort to monitor mesozooplankton communities at Canadian bivalve aquaculture sites using an optical imaging system. Can. Tech. Rep. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 3581: vii + 101 p