Gully Marine Protected Area Meso- and Bathypelagic Survey Program: Catch Database

During 2007–10, four midwater-trawl surveys were conducted in and near the Gully Marine Protected Area, which encompasses much of a submarine canyon adjacent to Nova Scotia’s Sable Island, in the northwest Atlantic. IYGPT and Diamond IX nets were fished to meso- and upper bathypelagic depths, following a fixed-station, depth-stratified, replicated survey design, with sampling in daylight and at night, in both late summer and early spring. The catches and other observations made have been fully reported elsewhere, though mostly as condensed summaries. Here, we provide the complete dataset documenting the trawl catches, together with a Data Dictionary, for any future analysts who may seek to extend the work or compare the Gully catches to those taken elsewhere. Users of these data are urged to give careful attention to the extensive metadata on the surveys cited in the Data Dictionary and to the many caveats presented there.