Screening of Invasiveness Risks for the Current and Potential Non-Native Marine Fishes in South Korea

Abstract

Risk screening tools are increasingly being used to identify potential invasiveness risks of non-native species and to ensure their effective management. One of the risk screening tools, the Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit (FISK) has been successfully used in many risk assessment areas and has recently been upgraded to the new generic tool, which covers all aquatic species so-called the Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK). South Korea, with its international ports and indented coastline, has a semi-enclosed topography allowing the rapid spread of non-native species. In this thesis, it was aimed to assess the invasiveness risks of potential and existing non-native marine fish species for South Korea by using AS-ISK. With this purpose, 57 marine fishes were evaluated independently by one assessor and the threshold score, which reliably distinguished the species as potentially invasive (high risk) and potentially non-invasive (medium to low risk) was calculated as 5.5. Of the 57 species evaluated, 33 were classified as "low risk" while 6 were classified as "medium risk" and 18 as "high risk". While Pterois miles was determined as the highest score species with 29 points, Hemitaurichthys multispinosus was determined as the lowest score species with -14 points. The results suggested that further risk management studies should be conducted on the species that are particularly yielded higher scores for the conservation of the marine biodiversity of South Korea.