A Red Sea grouper, brown covered in white spots and blotches, in sheltered reef and lagoon.
To about 50 cm, common at 40. Dark olive-brown to brownish-grey marked with large pale blotches, most of them bigger than the eye, and overlaid with numerous small white spots. The white spots continue onto all the fins except the pectorals, where they are confined to the base, which is a usable check.
That two-scale pattern — large blotches with fine spots on top of them — is the identification. No named confusion species with a single clean separator was found, and this entry does not invent one.
One to thirty metres on shallow protected coral reef, lagoons and seaward slopes; it tolerates brackish water. Its range is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Socotra and nowhere else.
Almost nothing has been published about it. FishBase states outright that little biological information exists, and no sex change, aggregation, cleaning or diver-tolerance data was found. It is sold fresh in local markets.
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.
