A small pale grouper with red-brown spots and four dark dots along the base of the dorsal fin, which is the character that separates it.
To about 40 cm, though the two standard sources give 33 and 42. Grey, brown, olive or pale orange with orange-brown to reddish spots. The mark to look for is four spots along the upper back at the base of the dorsal fin, which the fish switches between black and white at will. There are no blue spots on it.
The coney is the confusion: blue spots with dark edges and two black dots on the tail base, against orange-brown spots and the four colour-changing back spots here.
Nought to a hundred and seventy metres, over seagrass and coral reef, and on rocky ledges below twenty-seven metres in the Gulf of Mexico. It works a home range of about two thousand square metres, hunts mainly at night, and takes fish including brown chromis. Females change to males at 20 to 23 cm, around four or five years old, after the August and September spawning.
Solitary and secretive but easy to approach: it holds still rather than moving off, which is why it photographs well. Ciguatera is reported.
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.
