LAUSR

Abstract The offshore Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fishery in Eastern Canada is currently harvested by factory freezer vessels using bottom trawls. This fishery is a major contributor to the regions’ economy, however, bottom trawling typically is associated with negative benthic impacts. We evaluated the at-sea engineering performance of a roller footgear using underwater cameras. This footgear is designed to roll, limiting negative benthic impacts and reducing fuel usage, compared to non-rolling rockhopper footgear. We describe and document a new technique for measuring the time to complete a rotation in seconds (TCR) of bosom and quarter-wing footgear sections on hard, mixed, and soft seabed. Our results showed that footgear sections were rotating at extremely low rates. Results predicted a statistically significant 184 % increase in TCR when comparing the bosom to the quarter-wing section (p =  0.035). TCR on hard seabed ranged from 23.6 s in the bosom to 43.4 s in the quarter-wing section, while mixed (from 169.0–311.1 s) and soft (from 862.6–1587.6 s) seabed types produced significantly longer TCR (p