Blue lines over yellow, with a dark tail and dorsal fin. It faces off with others of its own species mouth to mouth, gaping, which is a display rather than a fight.
To about 46 cm and twenty-three years. A yellow fish carrying dense narrow blue stripes over the whole flank, the stripe below the eye arched. The soft dorsal and the tail are dark to blackish with yellow borders while the spiny dorsal stays yellow. The mouth lining is red.
Juveniles are a different fish: three black stripes, an elongate dark spot at the tail base, and yellow stripes low on the body.
Two separations, one character each. The french grunt’s soft dorsal and tail are yellow, not dark. The white grunt’s blue stripes stop at the head, where this fish’s run the whole length of the body.
Nought to forty metres, usually the top twenty, over coral and rock, on drop-offs and under ledges. Small to large daytime groups sit almost stationary facing into the current, and feed at night on crustaceans, bivalves, worms, octopus and small fish. Juveniles use seagrass and mangroves.
Unregulated in Florida, which means the default limit of two fish or a hundred pounds per person per day, whichever is more.
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.