The dataset includes two variables, observed mean abundance of young salmon lice and modeled lice density, from three years 2015-2017 at specific locations along the Norwegian coast. The first variable is observed number of salmon lice copepodids, chalimus 1 and chalimus 2 on wild fish caught with traps or gillnets. The second variable is lice density calculated from the salmon lice model at the same locations as the wild fish were caught, averaging over 15x15 grid points and summed over three weeks. For more details see Myksvoll et al. 2018 (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201338).