Net pen culture has become widespread, and there is growing concern about impacts to benthic communities below the facilities. Potential impacts are hard to assess because the ideal sites for net pen culture are deep, often have currents or cold temperatures, and have patchy substrates that can’t be grab-sampled. Hamoutene et al. (2015) overcame this problem by developing a video monitoring protocol that was able to identify benthic organisms below pens to a high taxonomic level and quantify their abundance. This journal review originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of Fisheries magazine