---
title: Orange-Spotted Grouper (Epinephelus coioides)
scientific_name: Epinephelus coioides
common_name: Orange-Spotted Grouper
taxon: Groupers
conservation_status: VU - Vulnerable
published: 2024-11-06T23:58:00.662Z
updated: 2026-08-12T22:29:24.702Z
tags: Orange-Spotted Grouper, Epinephelus coioides, Groupers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/orange-spotted-grouper
---

# Orange-Spotted Grouper (*Epinephelus coioides*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Groupers (*Epinephelidae*)
- **Size:** up to 1.2 m
- **Weight:** 15 Kg
- **Depth:** 1-100 m
- **Max age:** 22 yrs
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Turbid inshore water, harbors and estuarine sand, juveniles in shallow seagrass
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** VU - Vulnerable

## How to recognise it

- pale brown body covered in orange to brown spots, denser on the head and fins
- five faint dark bars that show and fade as the fish moves
- large mouth with the lower jaw slightly protruding
- length up to 1.2 m

A heavy pale grouper to 1.2 m (4 ft), spotted orange over the body and fins, with five faint dark bars that come and go as the fish moves. It is the grouper of turbid water: harbors, estuarine sand, the murky inshore edges that divers avoid and fishermen do not.

Juveniles live even further in, in seagrass and mangrove shallows so brackish that most reef fish cannot follow, which is where the young of a great many commercial groupers spend their first year. Coastal development that fills a mangrove flat removes the nursery for a fish that will later be caught kilometers away.

Like its relatives it starts female and changes sex later, and the switch is size-driven rather than age-driven: remove the large fish and the population converts, slowly, to replace them.

This is one of the two or three most farmed groupers in Asia, and hatcheries produce it by the million. Farming a protogynous fish needs a trick - hormone treatment to produce males early - which is why the species is also a standard laboratory animal for work on how sex change is controlled at all.

## Also known as

- **English:** orange-spotted grouper, Gold Spotted Rock Cod, Estuary Rock Cod
- **Arabic:** هامور برتقالي النقاط, Hamoor, Hamour
- **French:** Loche à taches oranges, Mérou taches oranges
- **Italian:** cernia a macchie arancioni
- **Spanish:** Mero de pintas naranjas, Mero Moteado
- **Portuguese:** Garoupa-de-pintas-laranja
- **Czech:** kanic oranžovoskvrnný
- **Japanese:** チャイロマルハタ, Chairomaruhata
- **Chinese:** 點帶石斑魚
- **DA:** Orangeplettet havaborre
- **FI:** oranssitäplämeriahven
- **ID:** Kerapu lumpur
- **TGL:** Lapu-lapung lupot, Alatan, Kaltang
- **TH:** ปลากะรังจุดน้ำตาล, ปลาเก๋าดอกแดง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Bola coioides* Hamilton, 1822
- *Cephalopholis nebulosus* (Valenciennes, 1828)
- *Epinephelus coiodes* (Hamilton, 1822)
- *Epinephelus nebulosus* (Valenciennes, 1828)
- *Epinephelus suillus* (Valenciennes, 1828)
- *Homalogrystes guntheri* Alleyne & MacLeay, 1877
- *Serranus nebulosus* Valenciennes, 1828
- *Serranus suillus* Valenciennes, 1828

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, Mozambique, Red Sea, South Africa, Tanzania

---

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