---
title: Fewspot Hind (Cephalopholis oligosticta)
scientific_name: Cephalopholis oligosticta
common_name: Fewspot Hind
taxon: Groupers
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-06T22:44:21.434Z
updated: 2026-08-21T20:06:46.155Z
tags: Fewspot Hind, Cephalopholis oligosticta, Groupers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/fewspot-hind
---

# Fewspot Hind (*Cephalopholis oligosticta*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Groupers (*Epinephelidae*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 15-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral reef and rocky slopes, mostly below fifteen meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- orange to orange-red body with a scattering of small blue spots on the upper half
- only a few spots, unlike the heavily spotted hinds
- small for a grouper, up to 30 cm
- found in the Red Sea and nowhere else

Watch one long enough and it will change color in front of you.

Groupers repaint themselves in seconds. Pigment cells in the skin are pulled tight or spread wide under nerve control, and a fish that was plain orange goes blotched, or pale, or throws a set of dark bars across itself, faster than you can change a camera setting. They do it for camouflage against a new background, and they do it as signaling: a courting male, a fish defending a hole and a fish being cleaned all wear different patterns, and the pattern changes as the situation does.

It makes identification harder than the books admit. The same individual can look like two species over the course of a dive, which is why field marks that survive the change - the shape of the tail, the number and placement of spots, the size - are worth more than a general impression of color.

This one is a small hind, orange to orange-red with only a few blue spots scattered over the upper body, and it lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else. It sits deeper than most of its relatives, generally below fifteen meters.

## Also known as

- **English:** vermilion grouper, Vermilion Hind, roughcheek hind
- **French:** Vieille De La Mer Rouge
- **Spanish:** Mero Carmesí del Mar Rojo, Cherna Del Mar Rojo
- **Portuguese:** Garoupa-monarca
- **Czech:** kanic máloskvrnný
- **Chinese:** 少點九棘鱸

## Range

Eritrea, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/fewspot-hind)*
*Updated: August 21, 2026*