Sometimes I am still shocked that I go to search for something on the Internet, such as Grouper Fish but just type in Grouper and there is a band that pops up, there is a dating site that pops up, and on and on. Why I am so surprised is beyond me, but I am… So I missed last week’s fish post, I was sitting on a tractor, which is where I’ve been a lot of this week too. Don’t worry; we’ve only caught it on fire once… Yeah, don’t ask. We’re going to switch gears from the lake aquatic life to the ocean aquatic life since there are two trips coming up this summer. So let’s learn about Grouper fish because they’re so ugly they are cute.
The Grouper
- The word “grouper” is most widely believed to be from the Portuguese name, garoupa.
- The origin of this name is Portuguese is believed to be from the indigenous South American language.
- In Australia, “groper” is used instead of “grouper” for several species, such as the Queensland grouper.
- In the Philippines, it is named Lapu-Lapu in Luzon, while in the Visayas and Mindanao it goes by the name pugapo.
- In New Zealand, “groper” refers to a type of wreckfish, which goes by the Mãori name hãpuku.
- In the Middle East, the fish is known as hammour and is widely eaten, especially in the Persian Gulf region.
- Groupers are teleosts, typically having a stout body and a large mouth.
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- Teleostei is one of three infraclasses in class Actinopterygii, the ray-finned fishes.
- They are not built for long-distance, fast swimming.
- They can be quite large, and lengths over a meter and weights up to 100 kg are not uncommon, though obviously in such a large group, species vary considerably.
- 1 meter is 3.28feet for those of you like me who need the conversion!!
- 100 kg comes to 220 pounds.
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- They swallow prey rather than biting pieces off it.
- They do not have many teeth on the edges of their jaws but they have heavy crushing tooth plates.
- They habitually eat fish, octopuses, and crustaceans.
- Some species prefer to ambush their prey, while other species are active predators.
- Their mouths and gills form a powerful sucking system that sucks their prey in from a distance.
- They also use their mouths to dig into the sand to form their shelters under big rocks, jetting it out through their gills.
- Larger black grouper are preyed upon by sharks, including the sandbar shark and the great hammerhead.
- Smaller grouper are preyed upon by other groupers and moray eels.
- Black grouper are also frequently caught for human consumption.
- These fish can live for more than 30 years, though most are caught before reaching that age.
- Black grouper are born female, but some transform into males when they are large enough.
- Reports…
- A newspaper reported a 396.8-pound grouper being caught off the waters near Pulau Sembilan in the Straits of Malacca on Tuesday 15, January 2008
- Shenzhen News in China reported that a 1.8-m (5.9feet) grouper swallowed a 1.0m (3.28 feet) whitetip reef shark at the Fuzhou Sea World aquarium.
- September 2010 a Costa Rican newspaper reported a 2.9-m (7.5ft) grouper in Cieneguita, Limón. The weight of the fish was 250 kg (550lb) and it was lured using one kilogram of bait (2.2lb) of bait.
- November 2013, a 310-kg (686lb) grouper had been caught and sold to a hotel in Dongyuan, China.
- March 2015 off Bonita Springs in Florida a big grouper took in one gulp a 4-foot shark which an angler had caught.
And when you google Grouper Fish Recipes, a lot come up! Must be pretty tasty? Don’t ask me, I’m just the reporter, not the eater as I’m not big on fish.
And that’s a rap!
Sources:
Atlantic Panic
Conversions
- https://www.google.com/search?q=meter+in+feet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
- https://www.google.com/search?q=100kg+to+lbs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
National Aquarium
Wikipedia