These data are provided by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in Woods Hole, MA, USA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada.
We request that people use the following standard acknowledgement when publishing or presenting results that utilize NMFS data extracted from BCO-DMO.
Note that a variety of gear types have been used, and these have varying selectivity or sampling efficiency for different organisms. Moreover, a number of different vessels have been involved in sampling, and gear and methods have evolved over time. All of these factors affect sampling and the interpretation of data. The agencies have developed correction factors to adjust for these changes and use other statistical tools for population estimates. The data we present here can be used as an index of abundance (over time or space) within a species or among species with similar vulnerability to the sampling gear. The data refer to a standard tow or sample and are not normalized to a unit area. Please refer to the detailed metadata for each dataset for more information, and to the data products for useful summaries of the data. Users are encouraged to contact the responsible agencies for guidance in using the data.
It is not ethical to publish data without proper attribution or co-authorship. The data are the intellectual property of the collecting investigator(s).
The intellectual investment and time committed to the collection of a data set entitles the investigator to the fundamental benefits of the data set. Publication of descriptive or interpretive results derived immediately and directly from the data is the privilege and responsibility of the investigators who collect the data.
The purpose of a data archive is to facilitate collaboration between scientists, to allow the combination of multiple data sets for interdisciplinary and comparative studies, and the development and testing of new theories. The data managed by the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) are made available even though they may not be "final" (i.e. error free) data.
Any person making substantial use of a dataset must communicate with the investigators who acquired the data and/or the Data Management Office prior to publication and anticipate that the data collectors will be co-authors of published results. This extends to model results and to data organized for retrospective studies.
The data available here are intended for scholarly use by the academic and scientific community, with the express understanding that any such use will properly acknowledge the originating investigator. Use or reproduction of any material herein for any commercial purpose is prohibited without prior written permission from the Data Management Office.