Speed matters when it comes to batter

A snapper's speed may determine how tasty it is, says a researcher. Photo / Greg Bowker

The speed a snapper can reach could have implications for how tasty it is, researchers say.

Canterbury University biological sciences researcher Sarah Coxon says this could also have implications for better commercial harvesting of snapper.

Dr Coxon is studying how fast snapper swim in the lab. She said a fish's maximum sustainable swimming speed helped to determine whether it was caught within trawling nets, as well as its physical condition when landed.

This in turn had important implications "for both the quality of fish as a food product, and for survival of juvenile fish that are discarded as bycatch".

Dr Coxon said she had been studying snapper in a laboratory to gauge the maximum speed a fish could sustain, much like a "beep test" for fish. She said her research was aimed at promoting improvements in the quality and sustainability of the country's snapper fishery.

"Global fish stocks are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of overfishing," she said.

The United Nations considered some 80 per cent of the world's fish stocks to be over-exploited, she said.

"In New Zealand, fisheries are one of our largest export earners and were valued at $1.26 billion in the 2010-2011 season." But industry growth was constrained by an inability to continually increase catch size, and alternative ways to add value to the existing catch must be found, Dr Coxon said.