This seafloor character raster for the Offshore of Arcata, California, map area is part of USGS Data Series 781 (Golden and Cochrane, 2019). Seafloor character is a combination of seafloor induration (surface hardness) and rugosity, was derived from multibeam echosounder (MBES) and annotated underwater video data collected offshore of Arcata, California. The MBES and underwater video data were collected in support of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) California Seafloor Mapping Program, under a collaboration with the California State University Monterey Bay Seafloor Mapping Lab, the California Ocean Protection Council, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Substrate observations from the underwater video were translated into Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS; Federal Geographic Data Committee, 2012) induration classes to use as training for a supervised numerical classification of the MBES data. The seafloor character raster is provided as a 2-meter resolution GeoTIFF.