A large temperate wrasse, not a grouper. Females are brown and the terminal males are deep blue. It follows divers closely and is the fish most associated with Sydney's shore dives.
To about 1.2 m. Thick lips, peg-like teeth, heavy scales and a large tail at every size. Juveniles are brown to green-brown, females brown to reddish-brown with darker red spots on the scales, and males bright blue, navy to cobalt, sometimes with yellow-orange around the eye.
Nothing else on a New South Wales reef reaches this size with that head. Where the range approaches the western blue groper in Victoria, the eastern fish has more lateral-line scales and blue scribbles around the eye.
Every one starts as a female and the largest become blue males. It eats urchins, prising them off the rock, and that is what a diver actually sees it doing. It will follow divers and come close, which is why it is the state fish of New South Wales and why it was so easy to shoot.
One to forty metres on coastal rocky reef, with juveniles in estuarine seagrass. Listed as Near Threatened. Spearfishing has been banned since 1974 and sale since 1980, and a recreational line-fishing ban is running for three years from March 2025.
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.