Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) are a cost-effective and statistically powerful tool used to survey predator abundances in various marine ecosystems. Their use has continued to increase due to ease and flexibility of use, with emerging studies on community composition, behaviour, and morphometrics. Previous studies have focused on the temporal reproducibility of BRUVS, however little focus has been placed on the spatial implications of bait plumes and how this impacts population estimates. BRUVS metrics are typically “sightings per unit effort” where effort is time. However, the actual sampled area may be dramatically different between deployments of the same temporal length, due to varying oceanographic conditions. Therefore, the primary question is: What is the true area sampled? The first stage of the process is to determine how much olfactory stimulant is released from bait under different environmental conditions. Data collected will be used as one factor in a biophysical model of a bait plume with the proposed outcome of understanding plume size variability under different conditions. The significance of this study lies in the quantification of potential bias in a method of growing popularity in the field of marine ecology to reduce errors in the interpretation of abundance data collected.