These associated habitats are where groupers can find most of their food items and hide from predators while they are small in size, also known as their ‘nursery’ areas. Once they grow larger, they migrate and take residence in shallow and deeper coral reefs.

Protecting mangroves and seagrass beds increases the likelihood that slow growing groupers will survive during the 5-8 years needed to become adults and eventually migrate to FSA sites to produce the next generations that will help re-populate nearby coral reefs. Remember, we cannot have adults without the juveniles! We must protect their habitats at all life stages.

Their food choices change as they grow and develop. While they are small, groupers eat crabs, shrimp, and squid. As they grow larger, they transition to eating mostly fish.

Most species form large aggregations called fish spawning aggregations (FSA) which typically occur during specific times of the year. Each species has a unique time of the year and specific location to aggregate until they spawn, and at some locations various grouper species can overlap. During these FSAs, groupers will release their eggs and sperm high into the water column where they are fertilized and carried by the ocean currents. These reproductive outputs are extremely important to grouper population replenishment and resilience, as it represents the only opportunity that for the grouper to contribute to the next generation.

Groupers perform a key ecological function as reef predators. This means that they exert a top-down control on some of the components of the marine food web and as a result they help maintain optimal populations of fish that they consume. If these predators vanish, then the lower trophic level fish and organisms can grow and expand out of control which can alter the delicate balance of the food web. This maintains other populations in evolutionary and ecological balance in ecosystems that are productive and can rebound from natural events.

Yes! We have featured what we call “coral reef groupers” which are those associated with shallow (0-30m/100ft) coral reef systems and commonly encountered by fishers, divers and spearfishers. But there are also a few rarer species like the , Comb and Mutton Hamlet in associated habitats as well as deeper water grouper species like the Misty, Marbled, Snowy, Red and Yellowedge grouper.