Stock Assessment of Uku in Hawaii, 2020

This report presents the stock assessment of the ukupalu snapper, commonly known as “uku”, in the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) covering the period from 1948 to 2018. Uku is  a wide-ranging reef-associated  snapper  (family  Lutjanidae)  that  is found  between  35° N  and  31° S  from  East  Africa to Hawaii. The scientific name for this species is Aprion virescens and it goes by several common English names in other regions, typically “green jobfish” or “gray snapper.”

The  Hawaii  uku  population  was  first  assessed  with  other  snappers  using a   catch-only  method applied at the family level (Sabater & Kleiber 2013).  That assessment determined that snappers were not overfished in the MHI. In 2017, uku were assessed at the species-level using a length-based  mortality  model  and  a  relatively  simple  numerical  population  model  to  obtain  fishing  mortality rates and spawning potential ratios (SPR).

Using this approach, it was determined thatthis stock was not experiencing overfishing (Nadon 2017), with a spawning potential ratio of 0.33, which was above the 0.3 limit defining overfishing

Nadon MO, Sculley M, Carvalho F. 2020. Stock assessment of uku (Aprion virescens) in Hawaii, 2020. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NOAA-TM-NMFS-PIFSC-100, 119 p.  https://doi.org/10.25923/57nb-8138.