The winter months are crawling with eager fishers ready to pop holes in the ice and draw out their dream of a prize pickerel.

Although a chilly sport, it is a relatively quiet and non-invasive activity when it comes to interactions between the fisher and the fish.

A new study at the University of Saskatchewan is underway to find out just how much the noise of a motorboat interferes with the predator-prey relationships between certain species of fish.

Professor Dough Chivers has partnered with colleagues from both Australia and the United Kingdom to document the findings found between the Australian pairing of the predator, the dusky dottyback and its prey, the ambon damselfish.

Chivers discovered the addition of loud motorboat noises does indeed interfere with the fanagling of the food chain.

The noise allows the predator dottyback to stalk its prey at a closer proximity -in some cases by at least 30 per cent.

Chivers also found the damselfish shows a delayed reaction time; the noise retards the instinctual reflexes the fish needs for its getaway, making its plausibility of being eaten more than twice as likely.

Chivers expects similar findings in his next experiment, where he hopes to document the predator-prey relationships of fresh water fish native to the Saskatchewan region.

Noise can be quite stressful to aquatic inhabitants, and the interference of a loud boat motor can impede both the food chain process, as well as the chances of good fishing in some areas of the Saskatchewan lake regions.

When asked what Chivers would like to see happening to enforce the preservation of the fish habitat, the professor express attention paid to the size of motor boaters use.

He suggests fishers choose a four-stroke engine over more powerful varieties.

Chivers would also like to see various 'no noise' zones for boaters to heed near certain fish habitats.