Nassau grouper

The Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus) is one of the large number of perciform fishes in the family Serranidae commonly referred to as groupers. It is the most important of the groupers for commercial fishery in the West Indies, but has been endangered by overfishing.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the Nassau grouper as critically endangered, due to commercial and recreational fishing and reef destruction. Fishing the species is prohibited in US federal waters. The Nassau grouper is a US National Marine Fisheries Service-listed threatened species by authority of the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Distribution

The Nassau grouper lives near reefs; it is one of the largest fish to be found around coral reefs. It can be found from the shoreline to depths near 330 ft (100 m). It lives in the western Atlantic Ocean and around the Caribbean Sea, from Bermuda, Florida, and the Bahamas in the north to the eastern coast of Venezuela, but it is only found in a few places in the Gulf of Mexico, most notably along the coast of Belize.