Green Greasy Grouper, Kerapu Botol, Epinephelus tauvina





Green Greasy Grouper. Photo Credit: Randall, J.E


 Green Greasy Grouper, is among the first species of groupers being cultured in this country. Back in mid of 1970s, the fry of cultured fishes of this species come from the wild. During that period, there is almost no fish nursing activity commercially done in the country. Since we did have abondance of the fry of this species in our water, it were caught and sold to neighbouring countries for nursing until to gain size of 1 inch size or bigger. Most of our cage culture operators during that time have bought the 1 inch to 3 inches fry from neighboring countries and grew them in their cages until they reach the market size of 600 g - 800 g. During that period, the mortality rate of stocked fry were very high especially during 1st week to  3rd weeks from the stocking day. Lack of know-how even on cage culture methodology was rampant among the fish farmers. Since then, many efforts taken by some of the government agencies on cage culturing  and fry nursing techniques to improve the culturing techniques and innovated the nursing techniques in this country. All these efforts although taking times to makes reasonable impacts, but were surely the changing factors of the new development of our aquaculture industry in this country.

Distribution of Green Greasy Grouper. Source: fishbase.org

The green greasy grouper is the native fish for many regions. It is one of  the most wide spread among  groupers species in tropical and sub-tropical waters. It can be found in Indian Ocean,Red Sea, Andaman Sea, Malacca Straits, South China Sea, China Sea, Sulu Sea and Pacific Ocean, ranging from 30°N to 32°S and 29°E to 123°W and always associated with the coral ecology from 1meter to 300 meters. It can grow up to 80 cm length and weight up to 27 kg.



Green greasy grouper's normally found in the coral area. Photo: Mahmud Ismail.

Green Greasy Grouper common being served in our local seafood restaurants. Although not getting high price in the export markets, this species still getting reasonable price locally which make some farmers now keeping some this species in their farming system  to supply to the local live seafood outlets. As our local markets favor slightly small size fishes (600g to 800g each) the farmers find that this species easy to be farmed and within comparatively reasonable farming periods. Since this is a native species to the our waters and with locally produced fry, it having less problems than any species that using imported fry.