The largest bony fish on any coral reef: up to 2.7 m (9 ft) and 400 kg (880 lb), a slab-sided gray-brown grouper mottled with dark blotches, with a mouth wide enough to take a small shark. Juveniles look nothing like the adults, being boldly marbled in black and yellow.
It does not chase anything. The entire body is a pump: the grouper drops its lower jaw and flares the gill covers so fast that the volume of the mouth cavity multiplies in a fraction of a second, and the resulting inrush of water carries prey in whole. Reef sharks, rays, turtles and large crustaceans have all been recorded going down that way. There is nothing to bite through, so nothing has to be chewed.
One of these tends to become a landmark. They are territorial, extremely long-lived and attached to a single structure, so a wreck or a particular cave will have its resident giant grouper for decades, and the fish is known individually by every guide on that site. That habit is also why the species is Vulnerable: an animal that lives at a known address, grows slowly, matures late and is worth a great deal of money is not hard to remove.
Like most groupers it starts female and changes sex later, though the details for this species are poorly documented. It is farmed commercially, and the hybrid with the tiger grouper is now one of the most widely grown food fish in Asia.
The genus. Epinephelus Bloch 1793 - epinéphelos (ancient Greek for clouded over). ETYFish
The species. Epinephelus lanceolatus (Bloch 1790) - lanceolate. ETYFish
- enormous, thick-bodied, gray-brown with darker blotches
- mouth wide enough to take a small shark
- juveniles boldly marbled black and yellow, unlike the adults
- usually resident in one cave or wreck
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
