Speckled blue grouper

Amazing fact

Small speckled blue groupers are mostly yellow, becoming bluish or pale grey as they grow.

Museums Victoria and OzFishNet

Speckled blue grouper in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

Small speckled blue groupers are mostly yellow, becoming bluish or pale grey as they grow.

SourceMuseums Victoria and OzFishNet — Purple Rockcod, Epinephelus cyanopodus (Richardson 1846)

THE REAL WORLD

The real Speckled blue grouper

Scientific name: Epinephelus cyanopodus
Japanese name: ツチホゼリ
Group: Ocean animals

Order: Perciformes
Family: Serranidae
Genus: Epinephelus

Facts about the real animal.

It lives from the Ogasawara and Ryukyu Islands to southern Taiwan, Hong Kong, the western Pacific and Micronesia.

鳥羽水族館 — ツチホゼリ

True to its name, it digs into the seabed soil to make its home.

鳥羽水族館 — ツチホゼリ

How the Speckled blue grouper lives

It lives around corals or rocky outcrops in bays and on reefs. Over sandy areas, it often swims in midwater rather than along the seabed. It mainly eats sand-dwelling fish and crustaceans. In spring and summer, it gathers with others to spawn.

Museums Victoria and OzFishNet 沖縄美ら海水族館

Basic data

Range: Ogasawara Islands, Ryukyu Islands, southern Taiwan, Hong Kong, western Pacific, Micronesia, and elsewhere

鳥羽水族館

Where the Speckled blue grouper has been recorded

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesJapan Asia World oceans Ocean

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

日本語: ツチホゼリ
简体中文: 细点石斑鱼
繁體中文: 細點石斑魚
Español: Mero Azul
Français: Loche Bleue
Português (Brasil): Garoupa-ciano
العربية: هامور أزرق الترقيط

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

鳥羽水族館 — ツチホゼリChecked: 2026-11-04
沖縄美ら海水族館 — ツチホゼリChecked: 2026-11-07
Museums Victoria and OzFishNet — Purple Rockcod, Epinephelus cyanopodus (Richardson 1846)Checked: 2026-11-07

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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