design: We collected benthic seawater samples from St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area (Nova Scotia, Canada) using a CTD rosette. Samples were filtered on board a research vessel for environmental DNA using a Smith-Root vacuum pump and 1.2 micron filters. These filters were preserved and then extracted at the Aquatic Biotechnology Laboratory for amplicon sequencing on an Illumina MiSeq. The 12S MiFish marker and COI marker with Leray primers were sequenced to obtain fish and invertebrate diversity from the MPA