The largest hawkfish, mottled brown and green, perched on eastern Pacific rock and dropping onto anything small that passes.
To about 45 or 60 cm depending on the source, which makes it by a wide margin the largest hawkfish in the world; most hawkfishes are under 15 cm. Heavy-bodied with a large blunt head. The ground colour is greyish-brown, overlaid with five broad bars made of golden-brown blotches edged in black and electric blue, with blue and gold bands radiating around the eye and two or three white spots on the upper back.
Juveniles look like a different fish and are regularly reported as one: white with dark brown body bars, reddish head bars and a red spinous dorsal fin. The coral hawkfish shares the same reefs but is three or four times smaller with scattered irregular blotches. An adult can be taken for a small grouper; the cirri on the dorsal spines and the stiff thickened lower pectoral rays settle it.
It is solitary and bottom-living, sitting propped on its pectoral rays on boulders and ledges between 1 and 30 m, completely still, and it lets divers get close. Juveniles are in the shallow surge zone. It ambushes fish and crustaceans. Because it is large, strongly patterned and holds position it is one of the more photographable fish at all three destinations. It has not been assessed by the IUCN.
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.