A grouper of the eastern Pacific offshore islands only, known from Revillagigedo and Clipperton and not from the mainland.
To about 60 cm. A notably plain, pale grouper: light grey to grey-brown or pale pinkish-brown with diffuse white spots and flecks and no strong pattern, and red margins to the soft fins. Juveniles are densely dark-spotted instead.
The flag cabrilla is the fish it is routinely confused with, and the separator is bold marking against no marking. The flag cabrilla has heavy mid-body blotching and a distinct black saddle on the upper tail base; this fish is uniformly pale with neither. One Mexican reference gives this species a small tail-base saddle as well, which STRI does not, so do not rely on the saddle in the other direction.
Rock and coral reef. Its whole range is the eastern Pacific offshore islands: Clipperton, Revillagigedo, Rocas Alijos and the tip of Baja California. It does not occur at the Galapagos or Cocos, which is worth knowing when identifying a photograph.
Beyond that, nothing. No reproduction, aggregation, cleaning or diver-tolerance data has been published, and its depth range is given as anything from one metre to a hundred depending on the source.
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.
