Specifications of camera apparatus

To record underwater video of lobster traps fishing in situ we designed and assembled a camera system capable of recording full high-definition videos for 13 continuous hours at high resolution (1080p) (see Bergshoeff et al., 2017). We mounted the camera housing to a wooden frame constructed around standard commercial single-parlour wire-mesh (3.8 cm mesh size) lobster traps capable of catching all types of crustaceans. We secured the housing to this frame and oriented the camera 58 cm above the trap pointing downward, giving a top-down field of view (FOV) of approximately 105 cm by 170 cm underwater. Using this setup we were able to observe lobster entering, exiting, inside the trap, as well as those around the trap for 13 continuous hours. We attached a Data Storage Tag (DST) to record the depth at which each trap was deployed, but due to a technological malfunction these data were not recoverable. We deployed the traps at depths shallow enough for ambient light to illuminate the pot during the day, therefore we did not use external lights. Traps were deployed within depths reflective of where commercial lobster traps are set (i.e., <20 m at low tide; DFO, 2016).