Replication Data for: Infaunal Invertebrates, Saint John Harbour, New Brunswick (CC BY 4.0)

In October 2018, sediment samples were collected in the Saint John Harbour, New Brunswick and subsequently analysed by Dr. Heather Hunt (University of New Brunswick) for benthic infaunal invertebrates and by Dr. Karen Kidd (McMaster University) for contaminants. This collaboration is a continuation of a long-term monitoring study called ‘Development of baseline data for long-term monitoring of sediment conditions at reference sites in Saint John Harbour, New Brunswick: benthic infaunal invertebrates and sediment contaminants 2011-2013’ (Van Geest et al., 2015). Sediment samples were obtained from six of the seven reference sites established by Van Geest et al. (2015) as well as an additional seven potential hotspots. Data includes heavy metals and sediment property analysis as well as invertebrate species presence. See Van Geest et al. (2015) for detailed field and lab methods. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Atlantic Ecosystems Initiatives program provided funding to support this work; COINAtlantic (coinatlantic.ca) collaborated with research partners to make data publicly available under the FAIR data guiding principles.