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.
The genus. Epinephelus Bloch 1793 - epinéphelos (ancient Greek for clouded over). ETYFish
- 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
