---
title: Epaulet Grouper (Epinephelus stoliczkae)
scientific_name: Epinephelus stoliczkae
common_name: Epaulet Grouper
taxon: Groupers
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-07T15:04:32.371Z
updated: 2026-08-12T08:12:12.120Z
tags: Epaulet Grouper, Epinephelus stoliczkae, Groupers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/epaulet-grouper
---

# Epaulet Grouper (*Epinephelus stoliczkae*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Groupers (*Epinephelidae*)
- **Size:** up to 38 cm
- **Depth:** 5-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral and rubble slopes, often on isolated coral heads
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- brown body densely covered in small pale spots, with a pale saddle at the tail base
- dark blotch behind the gill cover, the epaulet of the name
- smaller and slimmer than the reef groupers it shares ground with
- length up to 38 cm

A small brown grouper to 38 cm (15 in), speckled all over with pale dots, with a dark blotch behind the gill cover that gives it its name and a pale saddle at the base of the tail. It sits on isolated coral heads on rubble slopes and rarely moves far from one.

It is a regional fish. The range runs from this sea and the Gulf of Aden into the Arabian Sea and no further, which makes it one of a small group of groupers a diver can only see in this corner of the world - most of its relatives here are spread across the whole Indo-Pacific.

The confusion is with the Halfmoon Grouper, which shares the shape and the general brown. The separations are the shoulder blotch and the finer, denser spotting; older references frequently mix the two, and range maps for both should be read with that in mind.

It hunts small fish and crustaceans by day from a perch, and like the rest of the genus it starts as a female and changes sex on the way up.

## Also known as

- **English:** epaulet grouper, Epaulette Grouper, sand grouper
- **Arabic:** هامور الكتفية, Hamour
- **French:** Merou epaulette
- **Spanish:** Mero Hombrero
- **Portuguese:** Garoupa-epaulette
- **Czech:** kanic arabský
- **Chinese:** 肩飾石斑魚
- **Russian:** Аравийский групер

## Scientific synonyms

- *Serranus stoliczkae* Day, 1875

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/epaulet-grouper)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*