Silver with a dark spot high on the flank and red edges to the fins, schooling above reef by day.
To about 48 cm. Grey to dark olive above and silvery below, with a conspicuously large eye and red edges to the fins. The mark is a dark spot about the size of the eye on the lateral line under the last dorsal spines, with a quarter to a half of it sitting below the line. Juveniles are more strongly coloured, with a dark oblique stripe from the snout through the eye to the top corner of the gill cover.
The lane snapper also carries a lateral-line blotch, and the separator is stripes: the lane snapper has yellow ones along the body and this fish has none.
One to about two hundred metres, though usually shallow, in clear water over rock, sand and grass near reef. Large stationary daytime aggregations, feeding at night on small fish, shrimp, crabs and cephalopods. Juveniles in shallow water over sand and grass.
Florida sets a 12 inch minimum within the ten-fish aggregate. Ciguatera is reported. Its resilience is rated low, with a population doubling time of four and a half to 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.