[2] The black margate has a deep, compressed body with a high back and a short, blunt head.

It is found in Florida from Cape Canaveral south through the Florida Keys to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Flower Garden Banks, from Rockport, Texas along the coast of Mexico to the northern Yucatan Peninsula and northwestern Cuba.

It occurs throughout the Caribbean Sea then and along the northern and eastern coasts of South America to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

[1] The black margate was first formally described in 1791 as Lutjanus surinamensis by the German naturalist Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) with the type locality given as Suriname.

[7] The black margate is occasionally caught and marketed by fisheries, although the consumption of the flesh of larger fishes has been linked to cases of ciguatera poisoning.