The sawtail grouper commonly lives on fields of large boulders with gorgonians and black corals.

[2] This species attains a total length of 105 centimetres (41 in) and a maximum published weight of 14.1 kilograms (31 lb).

[1] It is occurs in rocky reefs and it is commonest in areas where there are large boulders with gorgonians and black corals.

It is thought that it is a protogynous hermaphrodite with the older reproductively functional females changing to males.

[1] The sawtail grouper was first formally described in 1967 by the American ichthyologists Richard Heinrich Rosenblatt (1930-2014) and Bernard J. Zahuranec with the type locality given as the Inner Gorda Bank in Baja California Sur.