NZJMFR Call for Papers: Special issue on Freshwater fish in focus: knowledge, values and management

Freshwater fish in Aotearoa New Zealand are unique and highly valued. Many of our native species are threatened and face an uncertain future, while the place of introduced species in Aotearoa is increasingly contested. Freshwater fish communities face a legacy of habitat modification, species introductions and overfishing, which are compounded by climate change and new invasions. There is an urgent need to understand how fish and human communities alike are responding to these changes.

This call for papers is for a special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research. We are seeking boundary-pushing contributions from across the natural and social sciences and kaupapa Māori research that provide insight into the trajectory of freshwater fish and fisheries in Aotearoa New Zealand. These papers will engage with novel ideas and methods to understand freshwater fish ecologies and relationships to people in a changing world. Collectively, the special issue will bring together multiple baskets of knowledge to shed light on the current state of freshwater fish and inform how we protect these taonga and support flourishing fisheries into the future. 

We seek diverse contributions from a broad range of topics, including but not limited to ecology, hydrology, mātauranga Māori, planning, social sciences, and humanities, and from researchers, kaitiaki and practitioners who work with freshwater fish. We are looking for a mix of research, review, and short perspective articles.

Guest Editors

Finnbar Lee (Cawthron), Kiely McFarlane (Cawthron), Lauren Hitt (Canterbury), Siobhan Nuri (Waikato), Olivier Raven (Waikato), and Marc Tadaki (Lincoln)

Submission information

Please send a preliminary title, indicative author list, affiliations and a short descriptive paragraph outlining the scope of your proposed manuscript as soon as convenient to Dr Finnbar Lee via finnbar.lee@cawthron.org.nz by 31 January 2025. 

Authors will be notified of the result and formally invited for full submission by 28 February 2025. The anticipated manuscript submission deadline is 31 August 2025.

Following acceptance, individual articles will be published online first with a DOI before they appear in the special issue.

Acceptance for publication will depend on the outcome of the normal peer review process and authors meeting critical time schedules. See Instructions for Authors on the journal homepage before making a formal submission to the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research if your EOI is selected.

If you’re affiliated with any of the participating institutions for the Council of Australian University Librarians and Taylor & Francis transformative agreement, you may publish your articles Open Access at no cost to yourself in the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research. Find out if you’re eligible. 

Please direct any queries to the Managing Guest Editor, Dr Finnbar Lee at finnbar.lee@cawthron.org.nz.