Dotted Grouper,Epinephelus epistictus(Temminck & Schlegel, 1842) (Osteichthyes: Serranidae), recorded from the marine waters of Iraq

Groupers of the world: A field and market guide

“…Out of 157 species described in the guide, there are 41 species indicated to occur in Omani waters (026.1% of the total number of species dealt with). In a new edition the recently reported range extensions of the moustache grouper Epinephelus chabaudi (Castelnau, 1861) and the dotted grouper E. epistictus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1842) to the Arabian Sea coasts of Oman and the marine waters of Iraq at the northwest corner of the Arabian Gulf (Al-Mukhtar et al 2011) would also deserve consideration.…”

First record of the dotted grouper Epinephelus epistictus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1843) (Perciformes, Serranidae) in Malaysia

“…It is a demersal species, which inhabits the continental shelf over soft or rocky bottom at a considerable depth (71–800 m); however little else is known about this species (Paxton et al 1989; Heemstra and Randall 1993; Goldshmidt et al 1996; Sommer et al 1996; To and Pollard 2008). This is a widely distributed species in the Indo-West Pacific, occurring off South Africa, in the Red Sea (Randall and Adam 1983), off Iraq (Mustafa et al 2011), Oman (Krupp et al 2000), on the west coast of India, Korea, Japan, in the South China Sea (Randall and Lim 2000), off Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia (Limmon et al 2017; Mous and Pet 2018), Papua New Guinea (Froese and Pauly 2018), and northern Australia (Bray 2018; Dianne 2019). It can be identified by a pale brown body with irregular rows of small dark spots on the back and sides of the body.…”