Ecological Risk Screening Summary - So-iuy Mullet (Planiliza haematocheilus) - Uncertain Risk

Species that are considered uncertain risk need a more in-depth assessment beyond the Risk Summary to better define the species’ risk to U.S. environments.

So-iuy Mullet (Planiliza haematocheilus) is a fish native to eastern Asia (Russia, Korean Peninsula, Japan, China, and Vietnam). P. haematocheilus is a catadromous species, requiring marine or brackish water to reproduce. It is considered commercially valuable in many Asian countries and is used in aquaculture to support commercial fisheries. It has been deliberately introduced outside the native range to create commercial fisheries. The history of invasiveness for P. haematocheilus is High. P. haematocheilus has been introduced in Eastern Europe and around the Black Sea, which resulted in established populations in those areas. There are records of negative impacts to commercial fisheries in the brackish areas of the introduced ranges. Five species of native mullet have become extirpated after the introduction of P. haematocheilus. The climate match for the contiguous United States was High. Areas of high match were found from the Upper Midwest through inland New England, in some spots along the southern Atlantic Coast, southern Florida, and scattered around the west. The climate match results only cover the portion of the life cycle that occurs in freshwater and not the marine environment needed to reproduce. The certainty of assessment is low due to reproduction occurring in marine environments and a lack of representation of the introduced range in the climate match. Even though the climate match is high and the history of invasiveness is high, due to the need for marine environments for reproduction and the impacts occurring in brackish waters, the overall risk assessment category cannot be classified as high. Therefore, the overall risk assessment category for Planiliza haematocheilus is Uncertain.