Also calledsnowy grouper
Photos: Matt Wilbur, La Jolla Shores
Taxonomy
Rarity
Abundance rates how many are in suitable habitat. Find difficulty rates how hard it is to locate one on a daylight snorkel or freedive through 50 ft. A higher find score means a harder search. The rarity category also reflects the kind of encounter; it is not an average of the 2 scores.
Seasonality
Location
Adult star-studded groupers live deep, on rocky reef and on soft bottom from about 164 to 427 feet, and they are reported as deep as about 1,500 feet. Adults live deeper than juveniles. In Mexico they are mostly a surprise catch for recreational and subsistence fishermen, and some come up as bycatch in deep shrimp trawls in the central Gulf of California. The small fish at La Jolla are the ones a diver is most likely to see.
A juvenile is dark reddish brown to chocolate brown, covered in white spots set in a grid-like pattern. The spots fade quickly as the fish grows, and the adult is a uniform dark chocolate brown. Other marks hold through life: a dark band like a mustache above the upper jaw, a thin line at the base of the tail and a large head. The gulf coney and the olive grouper are the look-alikes in Mexican waters.
Deep Dive
The white spots belong only to the young fish. A juvenile's dark body is scattered with them, and the adult loses every one, so the small spotted fish on the La Jolla walls and the big plain brown adults in Mexican fishing photos look like 2 different animals.
Size estimates for this grouper disagree widely. FishBase lists a maximum of about 19 inches measured without the tail, while anglers in Mexico have landed far larger fish. The International Game Fish Association record is about 39 inches and almost 38 pounds, caught off Loreto in July 2022, and fish of about 51 and 53 pounds have been reported from San Felipe in 2017 and Bahia de los Angeles in 2025. A Mexican field guide gives a maximum of 4 feet and 58 pounds. Whatever the true ceiling, the fish is an ambush predator on small fish and bottom-living crustaceans, and it is considered a quality food fish.
Why so many juveniles appeared at La Jolla in 2026 is not known from anything read for this page.
Where to Find Them
Researched habitat and range candidates
San Diego · 2 beaches
These locations have suitable habitat within the species range. An assignment is a possible encounter, not a confirmed sighting at every beach. Season, depth, and local conditions still matter. Historical habitat without present-day evidence is excluded.