Cold-water coral and sponge communities are important indicators of vulnerable marine ecosystems and are used to delineate areas for marine conservation and fisheries management. Here, we used a diverse set of environmental data layers (n=30) representing a range of bathymetric derivatives, physicochemical variables, and water column properties to assess the primary factors influencing the niche separation and potential distributions of six habitat-forming groups of cold-water coral and sponge in the northeast Pacific region of Canada