syn. Bola coioides, Cephalopholis nebulosus, Epinephelus coiodes, Epinephelus nebulosus, Epinephelus suillus, Homalogrystes guntheri +2 more
up to 1.2 m15 Kg1-100 mVulnerable
1452
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
How to recognise it
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
Epinephelus coioides is a commercially valuable species in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea (Valinassab et al. 2006). Stock assessments indicate Epinephelus coioides is heavily, over-exploited within the Persian Gulf, over six times the sustainable limit in the southern Persian Gulf (Grandcourt et al. 2005, Grandcourt 2012). Growth and recruitment over-fishing are current threats to _Epinephelus coioides_in the southern Persian Gulf (Grandcourt et al. 2005). In 2005, fishing mortality (0.78 year-1) was in excess of the precautionary target (Fopt = 0.10 year-1) and limit (Flimit = 0.13 year-1) biological reference points. In 2011, fishing mortality (0.84 year-1) was again in excess of the precautionary target (Fopt = 0.11 year-1) and limit (Flimit = 0.12 year-1) biological reference points (Grandcourt et al. 2011a).
Epinepheluscoioides_is also collected as bycatch in a number of the commercial fisheries in the Persian Gulf (Raeisi et al. 2011, Hosseini_et al. 2012, Paighambari and Daliri 2012).
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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