---
title: Roving Coralgrouper (Plectropomus marisrubri)
scientific_name: Plectropomus marisrubri
common_name: Roving Coralgrouper
taxon: Groupers
conservation_status: VU - Vulnerable
published: 2024-11-07T15:33:21.241Z
updated: 2026-08-21T14:46:05.618Z
tags: Roving Coralgrouper, Plectropomus marisrubri, Groupers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/groupers/roving-coralgrouper
---

# Roving Coralgrouper (*Plectropomus marisrubri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Groupers (*Epinephelidae*)
- **Size:** up to 90 cm
- **Depth:** 1-147 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Crepuscular
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rocky and coral reef, in caves and overhangs by day
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** VU - Vulnerable

## How to recognise it

- gray-brown to deep red with pale bars down the flank
- large, up to 90 cm, and heavier through the body than a lyretail
- usually inside a cave or under an overhang during the day
- found in the Red Sea and nowhere else

This fish recruits moray eels to hunt for it, and the work that showed it was done here.

A grouper hunts in open water; a moray hunts inside the reef. Neither can reach where the other can, and a small fish escapes each of them by going where the other one is. So the grouper goes to a moray resting in its hole, puts itself head-down in front of it, and shakes its whole body rapidly. The moray comes out. The two then move over the reef together, and prey flushed out of a crevice by the eel is taken by the grouper in the open, while prey driven into the rock by the grouper is taken by the eel inside.

It gets better. When prey hides in a hole the grouper cannot enter, the grouper holds a headstand directly over the spot and shakes its head at the eel. That is a pointing gesture: a signal that refers to something in the world rather than to the signaler, which outside of this had been documented in very few animals, most of them primates and ravens.

Both fish do better on joint hunts than alone, and groupers learn which partner is worth recruiting. This animal lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else, and it was long filed under the name of its Indian Ocean relative.

## Also known as

- **English:** roving coralgrouper, Violet Coral Trout, Leopard Grouper
- **French:** Mérou loche vagabonde, Merou-loche vagabonde
- **Spanish:** Mero Errante

## Scientific synonyms

- *Perca miniata C* Forsskål, 1775
- *Plectropoma maculatum var. A* (Playfair, 1867)
- *Plectropoma maculatum var. D* Playfair & Günther, 1867
- *Plectropoma pessuliferum* Fowler, 1904
- *Plectropomus pessulifer* (Fowler, 1904)
- *Plectropomus pessuliferus pessuliferus* (Fowler, 1904)

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Tanzania

---

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