Red-purple with small blue spots and a deeply concave lyre-shaped tail, hunting in open water along drop-offs.
To about 80 cm, red to purple-brown covered in small blue or violet spots, with a deeply concave lyre-shaped tail and yellow margins to the fins. The tail is what names it and separates it from the other groupers on a reef slope.
It hunts along drop-offs in open water more than the bottom-sitting groupers do, which is why it is normally seen moving rather than resting. It is a well documented cause of ciguatera in the Indo-Pacific, and large individuals are the risk. Again: a reason not to eat one.
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.
