One of the largest groupers in this sea - over two meters (7 ft) and well past a hundred kilos in the record fish, though nothing near that size survives anywhere people can reach it.
It is also the least fussy about where it lives. This grouper turns up on coral reef, in lagoons, over mud, in estuaries and in water brackish enough that few reef fish will enter it, and the young are routinely found in mangroves and river mouths. That tolerance is why it became one of the mainstays of Asian grouper farming.
On the reef it hunts by ambush from a hole, taking fish and crustaceans with a strike that is mostly suction: the mouth opens, the volume of the head triples, and the prey arrives inside before it has moved.
Like other big groupers it starts female and becomes male with size, which means the largest fish in a population are the breeding males, and they are the ones a spear takes first. Slow growth plus that arrangement is why groupers of this size are now a rare sight rather than a normal one.
The genus. Epinephelus Bloch 1793 - epinéphelos (ancient Greek for clouded over). ETYFish
- pale gray-brown with scattered dark blotches and fine dark spots
- blotches irregular and diffuse, without the tight brown marbling of its relatives
- very large adults, heavy-bodied and thick-lipped
- length up to 234 cm
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
