Merritt et al.: BotCam: a baited camera system for nonextractive monitoring of bottomfish species 
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Discussion 
The primary objective of this research was to investigate 
whether, from an operational perspective, BotCam can 
provide reliable fishery-independent data on Hawaiian 
deepwater bottomfish populations that are of similar 
quality to data obtained from camera systems placed in 
shallower waters. The results indicate that BotCam can 
be a useful tool and furthermore illustrate the different 
types of data it is capable of collecting. Of particular 
importance, 80% of the deployments were successful in 
hitting their target sites and recording for the planned 
time interval. All of the “deep 7” species were attracted 
to BotCam and were recorded on videotape during the 
study. Thus from an operational standpoint, BotCam has 
the potential to collect data useful for assessment of bot- 
tomfish populations. Studies are underway to compare 
results of the pilot study with those from subsequent 
deployments to determine whether the method can lead 
to a greater understanding of the temporal and spatial 
dynamics of bottomfish populations. 
As with data collected with other methods, fish count 
data collected with underwater video systems are con- 
founded by a number of factors, especially when a bait- 
ed design is used. One factor that affects variance is 
the inconsistent size of the sampling area due to an 
unknown size of the bait-plume. One of the outstanding 
questions about baited camera stations is how extensive 
is the area of influence of the bait (Priede and Merrett, 
1996; Willis et al., 2000). Initial attempts to measure 
bait dispersal with the stereo-video system proved in- 
adequate; however, measurements of current speeds 
were promising (Merritt, 2005). Watson et al. (2005) 
compared baited and unbaited stereo-video surveys with 
underwater visual surveys in a shallow-water environ- 
ment and found that the baited stereo-video system 
was the best technique for obtaining consistent fish 
counts with the least sampling effort, and that unbaited 
techniques would require a high level of replication to 
yield similar results (see Harvey et al., 2007). Heagney 
et al. (2007), working in the open-water column, found 
