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The swimming kinematics (how fish move) and dynamics (how forces effect movement) of Schizopygopsis malacanthus were investigated during the determination of Ucrit by stepped velocity testing. A video tracking program was used to record and analyze the motion of five test fish in a Brett-type flume during each velocity step. The findings fell into three groups: (1) Even when flow was uniform, fish did not swim steadily, with speeds fluctuating by 2.2% to 8.4% during steady swimming. The proportion of unsteady swimming time increased with water velocity, and defining steady and unsteady swimming statistically, in terms of the definition of standard deviation of instantaneous displacements, may have higher accuracy. (2) In steady swimming, the forward velocity and acceleration of fish were correlated with body length (p < 0.05), but in unsteady swimming the correlations were not significant. The maximum swimming speed (1.504 m/s) and acceleration (16.54 m/s2) occurred during unsteady swimming, but these measurements may not be definitive because of tank space constraints on fish movement and the passive behavior of the test fish with respect to acceleration. (3) Burst-coast swimming in still water, investigated by previous scholars as an energy conserving behavior, is not the same as the gait transition from steady to unsteady swimming in flowing water. In this study, the axial force of fish swimming in the unsteady mode was significantly higher (×1.2~1.6) than in the steady mode, as was the energy consumed (×1.27~3.33). Thus, gait transition increases, rather than decreases, energy consumption. Our characterization of the kinematics and dynamics of fish swimming provides important new information to consider when indices of swimming ability from controlled tank testing are applied to fish passage design.