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.
The genus. Epinephelus Bloch 1793 - epinéphelos (ancient Greek for clouded over). ETYFish
- 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
Why it's threatened
Overfishing is not considered a major threat on a global-level at this time.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
