Seabed Explorer

Border and rules. The dashed red line is the Canada-US boundary (NOAA Maritime Limits and Boundaries line, via Marine Regions/VLIZ). It is a simplified line with 14 turning points, so it is not for navigation or legal use. Dots are only placed on the Canadian side and at least 1.5 km from the line. US-side waters and waters close to the line get no dots, because we only have Canadian seabed data and no US side data is loaded yet. The shaded US side is not surveyed here, it just has no data on this page. Fishing rules, licences and boat or crossing requirements differ on each side of the border and change often. Check the current rules for the side you are on: DFO (Canada) and WDFW (Washington). Nothing here says that any crossing or entry requirement is met.

Fish notes (general, not tied to the dots). A dot is seabed shape plus a modelled current. It does not say fish are there. For context only, with dates and sources:

• Georgia Strait winter Chinook report, Nov 20, 2025 (Harbour Chandler, a Nanaimo tackle shop): winter "feeder" Chinook were close to the bottom in deep water, fished at about 200 ft off Entrance Island reef, and tight inshore spots gave mostly undersized fish.
• Georgia Strait Chinook report, Jul 24, 2026 (Harbour Chandler): fish had moved deeper, with fishing close to the bottom in 225-240 ft effective.
• Recent reports, with dates: Discovery Passage, Oct 17, 2026 (Fishing Storie Charters): winter Chinook fished deep, 100 to 150 ft. Discovery Passage, Oct 7, 2026 (same charter): coho at 30 to 60 ft. Strait of Georgia, Oct 9, 2026 (Harbour Chandler): mature Chinook holding deep (the report gives a depth figure with no unit, so it is not repeated here).
• Research: Saygili and Trites 2024 (PLOS ONE, doi 10.1371/journal.pone.0311388) found adult Chinook in Juan de Fuca and Salish Sea feeding areas in late summer concentrated from the bottom to about 25 m above it. That was a late-summer survey, not a Gulf Islands fall forecast.

These are reports, not predictions: depth and timing vary by year, tide and bait. The water-column depth where fish sit is not the same as the seabed depth or the model current layer shown here. Fishing rules (open areas, limits, size and marking) are separate, so check the current DFO notices before fishing: DFO recreational salmon.

Experimental: what the yellow dots mean. Where a dot sits on a long continuous steep band, the popup also gives that band's top and base depth. That is seabed depth only, not a fish depth. The popup also repeats dated nearby reports. A dot marks a steep, well-surveyed part of the seabed where the model's current near the bottom averages at least 0.6 knots (0.3 m/s) over the chosen window. That is a simple rule we picked, shape plus flow, and nothing more. It is not a confirmed fishing spot and does not say fish are there. The current is a SalishSeaCast model value on a 500 m grid at the model level just above the bottom (the popup names the depth), so it is rough near shore and in narrow channels. Where the model bottom is much deeper than the deepest level we use, or does not match the chart depth, no dot is placed. Dots also need dense survey cover, none are placed in Juan de Fuca Strait where the survey shows line artefacts, and the bottom current is far weaker than the surface, so there are few dots.
Yellow dots and arrows are tools to explore, not advice.

Northern Strait to Quadra Island. This area is all Canadian waters, so no border line is drawn. The CHS seabed survey covers most of the water here, but the current model is rougher: narrow tidal passes such as Discovery Passage, Seymour Narrows and the channels around Quadra and Cortes Islands are about as narrow as the 500 m model cells, so modelled currents there are only a rough guide. Good seabed coverage does not mean a spot has a reliable model current, and the dot rules are the same as the southern map. The CHS grid has two thin one-pixel joins in this area (at 50.0 N and 125.0 W). They are drawn across for appearance only. They hold no depth data, and the dot rules treat them as no survey.

Depths are metres below chart datum, not the tide at any moment. Steep drop-offs come from the depth grid only (where depth changes quickly over 100 m). Cream is land. The pale hatched water has no CHS survey data in this grid.