Olive-brown covered in small orange spots with pale blotches along the back, on eastern Pacific rocky reef.
To about 60 cm. Grey-green to olive or reddish-brown with pale mottling and irregular white blotches, red-brown blotches on the head and front body, and a black saddle on the upper part of the tail base which is the reliable mark. Juveniles have black spots on the head and reddish median fins with white edges.
At Revillagigedo the fish to rule out is the Clipperton grouper, which is uniformly pale with diffuse white flecks and none of the bold blotching. At the Galapagos and Cocos, where that species does not occur, the confusion is the Panama graysby, which carries nine full-depth dark bars and a large dark patch behind the eye.
One to fifty metres on rock and coral, and adults are most abundant shallow. Solitary. It takes smaller fish by day and crustaceans after dark, and spawns in late summer. Nothing on aggregations, sex change or diver tolerance has been published for it.
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.
