Snapper are the most important recreational fish species in New Zealand and are often released back to the sea after capture.
Little is known about the survival of fish after they are released.
NIWA conducted a study using volunteer fishers to catch 960 snapper at different depths and with different hook placements.
The captured snapper were kept in holding nets and monitored by NIWA divers over several days.
Fish hooked in the lip had a low chance of dying if caught at shallow depths, but the chance of dying increased as depth increased.
Fish hooked elsewhere on the body had a higher chance of dying, with those hooked deep in the gut having the highest chance of dying.
This study suggests that fishing practices can impact fish survival, but there are ways to potentially reduce post-release mortality.
Understanding how fishing affects fish survival is therefore an important consideration for catch and release fisheries and when setting catch limit regulations.

This report updates and summarises the commercial catches, standardised catch per unit effort (CPUE), and observer and research data for hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) caught commercially during the 2021–22 fishing year.

These data include time series of length-at-age and catch-at-age from observer and land-based sampling of commercial catch. Length and age data from spawning and non-spawning fisheries are compared with those from previous years.

The overall catch in the 2021–22 fishing year was lower than the catch in 2020–21. Catches in 2021–22 decreased in most areas (west coast South Island, Cook Strait, Chatham Rise, Sub-Antarctic, and east coast North Island) and increased in the east coast South Island and Puysegur fisheries. The CPUE indices varied by area but were all at or above the long-term average.

Catch-at-age data are important for the assessment of fish stocks because they provide information on the year class strength of age classes caught and are used in analyses of trawl surveys and commercial fisheries. Most of the catch in 2021–22 was of fish 45–90 cm length from the 2006–2019 year classes.

The 2014 and 2015 year classes were important in all areas except for the Chatham Rise, and the 2016 and 2017 year classes were low in all the main fisheries. The 2018 and 2019 year classes appeared strong in the WC.north, SA.snares, SA.auck, CR.shallow, and CR.deep sub-fisheries.

Biomass indices from research surveys and results from other research on hoki in the most recent year are also briefly described. Data in this report were incorporated in the model for the hoki stock assessment in 2023.

National Chemical Residues Programme Results for 1 July 2022 – 30 June 2023 and the programme for 1 July 2023 – 30 June 2024 for farmed cattle, sheep, goats, deer, pigs, ostriches, honey, salmon, poultry, wild mammals, and fish.

Research report part of the 'Revitalising calf rearing' project funded under Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures.