Red-brown with faint pale bars and black tips to the dorsal spines, sitting on reef and rubble.
To about 50 cm on the published maximum, but Red Sea fish are usually 22 to 40. Colour is no help: it runs pale greenish-grey through pale reddish-yellow to scarlet, and the same fish shifts between them. What does not change is the spiny dorsal fin, where the outer triangular part of each membrane between the spines is black or dark red, with a pale yellow or white spot behind each spine tip.
The halfspotted hind is the other red-brown Red Sea hind of this size on the same reefs, and only this fish has the black dorsal membranes.
Four to a hundred and sixty metres, usually twenty to forty-five, on outer reef slopes below fifteen metres and in sheltered bays. It ambushes crustaceans and small fish from cover and is occasionally seen in groups of ten to fifteen.
The sexual arrangement is unusual even for a grouper: the smaller fish in a social group are simultaneous hermaphrodites while the largest often loses female function and works only as a male. Ciguatera is reported.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
