Spotted like the red hind but with dark blotches along the back and a pale margin to the tail. On rocky ground and wrecks.
To about 65 cm and 4 kg, and to around thirty-three years. Tan to yellowish-brown or greenish with red-brown spots and scattered pale blotches. The mark is the saddles: two or three, sometimes up to five, dark saddles along the base of the dorsal fin plus another on top of the tail base.
The red hind has none of those, only dark fin margins. That is the whole separation.
One to a hundred and twenty metres, usually shallower than fifteen. Rocky reef, coral, and the sand and seagrass beside them; juveniles use rockpools. Solitary, and difficult to approach — it moves off, which is the opposite of the red hind’s behaviour and is a useful field cue in itself.
Two-thirds of its diet is crabs. Nothing has been published on spawning aggregations for it, which is a gap for a heavily fished hind. 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.
