Nassau Grouper

The Nassau grouper is a medium to large fish, growing to over 1 m (3.3 ft) in length and up to 25 kg (55 lb) in weight. It has a thick body and large mouth, which it uses to "inhale" prey. Its color varies depending on an individual fish's circumstances and environment. In shallow water down to 60 ft (18 m), the grouper is a tawny color, but specimens living in deeper waters are pinkish or red, or sometimes orange-red in color. Superimposed on this base color are a number of lighter stripes, darker spots, bars, and patterns, including black spots below and behind the eyes, and a forked stripe on the top of the head.

The Nassau grouper lives near reefs; it is one of the largest fish to be found around coral reefs. It can be found from the shoreline to depths near 330 ft (100 m). It lives in the western Atlantic Ocean and around the Caribbean Sea, from Bermuda, Florida, and the Bahamas in the north to the eastern coast of Venezuela, but it is only found in a few places in the Gulf of Mexico, most notably along the coast of Belize.

The Nassau grouper is fished both commercially and for sport; it is less shy than other groupers, and is readily approached by scuba divers. Its numbers have been sharply reduced by overfishing in recent years, though, and it is a slow breeder. Furthermore, its historic spawning areas are easily targeted for fishing, which tends to remove the reproductively active members of the group. The species is therefore highly vulnerable to overexploitation, and is recognized as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. The governments of the United States, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas have banned or instituted closed fishing seasons for the Nassau grouper in recent years. In the Cayman Islands, fishing in the spawning holes of the grouper had been banned until the end of 2016.