Vessel Charter and Crew Surveys, Newfoundland and Labrador

* Addendum 1 to extend the closing date. ** Vessel charter start date to be mutually agreed upon at contract award. See Annex "A" Statement of Work for further details surrounding the timeline. The main objective of the survey is to use multiple forms of sampling to inform management decisions, as well as to add to existing datasets on the biodiversity and broader distribution and abundance of species of conservation concern (e.g. corals and sponges). Data collection will be carried out using various techniques and equipment including: • Drop camera video transects to provide data on presence, distribution, and abundance of benthic species (e.g., sea pens and other corals) and substrate types. • Long-line stationary deep sea baited camera sets to provide data on fish species, benthos and substrate types and ground truth eDNA water sample collections. • Collection of water samples for eDNA analyses to assist with the detection of species that may not be captured by visual surveys, using a rosette system. • Collection of passive multibeam data. • A benthic grab and/or a box corer to collect sediment samples. • Other sampling methods as required based on the area being studied. Conditional Set-Aside under the Federal Government Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) This is an open tender. However, it will be conditionally set-aside under the Government of Canada’s Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) if two or more bids have been received by Indigenous businesses who are certified under the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) criteria and who may be listed in the Government of Canada’s Indigenous Business Directory (https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1100100033057/1610797769658). If your Indigenous business is not yet registered in the Indigenous Business Directory, please do so at the link provided above. If bids from two or more Indigenous businesses are compliant with the terms of the Request for Proposal, the contracting authority will limit the competition to those Indigenous businesses and will not consider bids from any non-Indigenous businesses that may have been submitted. If the bids from the Indigenous businesses are found to be non-compliant or non-responsive or are withdrawn, such that fewer than two compliant bids from Indigenous businesses remain, bids from all of the non-Indigenous businesses that had submitted bids will then be considered by the contracting authority.