Orange-red with even blue spots; the most photographed grouper on Indo-Pacific reef.
To about 50 cm, orange to brick red covered evenly in small bright blue spots that extend onto all the fins. Juveniles are yellow-orange with the same spotting. The similar Cephalopholis argus is darker and its spots are pale-ringed rather than solid blue, and it carries broad pale bars on the rear body.
It holds a fixed home range around a coral head or overhang and sits on the substrate rather than swimming, which makes it one of the easier large fish to photograph — it will generally let a diver settle at a metre and a half if the approach is slow and from the side. It hunts small fish, particularly anthias, in short rushes at dawn and dusk. Females change sex to male as they grow. Recorded from about 3 to 50 m.
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.
