How Spawning Affects Fishing in NZ

For fishing and fisheries management purposes, one of the most important things we can know about a species of fish is its spawning characteristics. How old are they when they first reach sexual maturity? How many eggs do they produce? Where do they spawn? When? What is the habitat of the larval/juvenile fish? That sort of thing.

As it turns out, this knowledge is scant even for many popular species and is often cobbled together from trawl surveys and a few personal observations.