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Archaeological collections of fish bones from previously excavated sites in New Zealand are being re‐examined and selected bones measured in order to estimate original fish size, reconstruct prehistoric fish catches and assess human impact on the fishery over the course of about 800 years of New Zealand prehistory. Several problems hamper this research, such as small sample sizes, lack of significant stratigraphy at many sites, inconsistent field collection strategies and failure to retain all of the material after initial analysis.

Although some common fish species show a significant decline in mean size between pre‐European and early historic samples on the one hand, and modern populations on the other, we have found little support for the common belief that there was a decline in mean fish size during the pre‐European period. We have observed increases over time in the mean size of snapper (Pagrus …