A large pale grouper with a rough leathery skin, which shadows other fish to get close to its prey.
To about a metre and at least 12.5 kg. The shape identifies it before anything else: deep-bodied, strongly compressed side to side, with a steep sloping forehead, which is nothing like the other eastern Pacific groupers. Alternating dark grey and pale bars overlaid with white blotches, narrow yellow fin margins, and scales largely buried in the skin, which is what the name refers to. Juveniles are quite different: black with narrow white bars.
The bacalao is the other large grouper at the Galapagos and Cocos and the shape separates them: elongate and robust with a long snout and projecting lower jaw there, deep and compressed with a steep forehead here.
Five to ninety metres on rock and coral, with the two standard sources disagreeing on the shallow limit. It hunts small benthic fish and crustaceans by day, and follows foraging moray eels to take what they frighten out. Juveniles shelter among sea urchin spines.
Spawning has been observed at Cocos Island. Named sites and dates have not been published. Listed as Least Concern, but with high fishing vulnerability and a population doubling time of over fourteen years.
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.
