A heavy deep-water grouper of the offshore islands, usually seen at the deeper end of a dive.
To about a metre and 22 kg. A conspicuously plain grouper: pale grey-brown with an intense green iridescence over the body, darker fins, blue iridescence in the pectorals, and dark lips with a dark tip to the lower jaw. No spots, no blotches, no bars.
The bacalao is the confusion in the Galapagos and it carries large oblong dusky blotches on the upper body and dark streaks radiating from the eye, where this fish has nothing.
It is a deep-water fish. The shallow limit is about forty metres and the sources disagree on whether it goes to 120 or 300, so most sport dives will not reach it, which is the practical point. No reproduction, aggregation or behavioural observations have been published at all.
The name is also in flux: Hyporthodus cifuentesi is current and Epinephelus cifuentesi is the older combination still widely printed. The two databases give different conservation categories, Least Concern and Near Threatened.
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.
