A heavy dark snapper with visible canine teeth, under eastern Pacific ledges and in caves.
To about 170 cm and 45 kg, the largest fish in this group on the site. Oblong and heavy-bodied, dark olive-brown to copper-red on the back and sides and silvery-white below, with canines at the front of the jaws large enough to be visible when the mouth is closed. Juveniles carry eight or nine dark cross-bars on the upper half, which persist faintly into adults.
The yellow snapper is the practical confusion and the tail settles it: bright yellow there, dark here.
Two to sixty metres, usually five to twelve, on coastal rock and coral. Solitary or in small groups, and always in or immediately beside shelter by day — a cave, a boulder undercut, wreck structure — feeding at night on crabs, prawns, shrimps and fish. Juveniles are in estuaries, mangroves and river mouths, and adults will run twenty kilometres up a river.
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.