The health of our animals is something we take very seriously at the Aquarium. If an animal requires medical care, we can many times treat those injuries or illnesses while the animal remains on exhibit. Sometimes, however, this isn’t possible. In these cases, the animals are taken out of their exhibit spaces and given some TLC behind the scenes.

Home Sweet Blue Hole

The Blue Hole exhibit, located on the second floor, has a number of resident goliath groupers. Recently, one grouper developed some health issues: it wasn’t eating normally and had some trouble regulating its buoyancy. As the Blue Hole is one of the largest gallery exhibits, it would have been very difficult to treat the animal effectively while on exhibit. As a result, the grouper was placed in a large holding tank behind the scenes. After a couple of months of care and monitoring, the health issues cleared up and it was time for the grouper to head home!

Getting ready to leave the holding exhibit

Moving a goliath grouper, even a relatively small one, is no easy task! A team of staff and volunteers assembled in the morning and came up with a plan to move the fairly large fish out of holding and down the narrow hallway to its exhibit. Along the way, it would be weighed by the veterinarians to see how it had been growing.

Making sure everyone is on the same page

Once the plan was in place, it was time to capture the grouper in its temporary home. After just a few minutes, the staff was able to maneuver the large grouper into a long, black stretcher. This method of moving the fish was much easier than other methods! The behind the scenes work areas are very narrow, with not a lot of room to maneuver a big holding container. The stretcher was much easier for the staff...and the grouper.

Up and over!

Once the animal was lifted out of the holding tank, the veterinarian staff quickly weighed the grouper. The scale showed that the grouper weighed about 70 pounds! And while that is a good sized fish, it’s a relatively small goliath grouper, which have been known to grow up to 800 pounds!

Stretcher is placed on the scale to get a weight

After the weigh-in, the crew moved quickly, carrying the grouper down the hall and then lifted him into the exhibit. It’s a tight fit between the ceiling and the side of the exhibit, but the staff and volunteers did a great job.  Soon enough, the grouper was back home!

Quick dash to the exhibit

To make sure the transition went smoothly for the grouper, the staff remained in the exhibit, keeping a close eye on the fish. The grouper adjusted fairly quickly to its watery home, swimming to a resting spot among the blue hole stalagmites.

Making sure the grouper, located by the red arrow, is adjusting okay

After spending some time in this cozy location, the grouper took a spin around the exhibit before finding yet another cozy spot to rest. Once the staff was satisfied that the grouper was comfortable in the exhibit, it was time to leave and let the grouper settle in. Overall, quite a successful moving day!

Settled in back home

The Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) can be found from North Carolina and Bermuda south to Brazil—and also in the Aquarium's Blue Hole exhibit, where they share the space with some impressive goliath groupers.

Spiny lobster—note the absence of the powerful front claws that American lobsters have

While Caribbean spiny lobsters are nocturnal, you can find them scurrying about the dim exhibit or resting in their favorite den. They are about a foot long, though they can grow to be longer than 3 feet and weigh 15 pounds in the wild!

Spiny lobster in the Aquarium's Blue Hole exhibit

Caribbean spiny lobsters are one of approximately 30 different spiny lobster species found in tropical and sub-tropical waters around the world. They can migrate long distances in single file lines called queues. This species can live down to depths of about 1,650 feet and feed on gastropods, bivalves, and carrion (dead things). Moray eels, nurse sharks, groupers, turtles and sometimes octopus are among the animals that prey on these animals.

Spiny lobster queue | Photo: Florida State University Herrnkind Lab

Unlike the American lobster they lack large claws and have spines covering their body for protection. Like their American lobster cousins, Caribbean spiny lobsters have long antennae on the front of their carapaces for defense. Caribbean spiny lobsters also shed their shells in order to grow bigger like other crustaceans.

Caribbean spiny lobster with antennae | Photo: Becky A. Dayhuff via Wikimedia Commons

You can sometimes find an Aquarium educator holding a molt, which was collected after an animal in the Blue Hole exhibit shed its shell. This happens when lobsters split their shell into two pieces and squeeze out, leaving the molt behind. Look out for this biofact because it's a great way to get a feel for those spines that give this lobster its name!

Conservation Notes: Caribbean spiny lobsters are a popular seafood and commercially fished. The fishery is regulated with size, season, egg-bearing and trap limits. The population of the Caribbean spiny lobster is healthy.

Look for other lobsters throughout the Aquarium! Can you find relatives of the Caribbean spiny lobster in the Isle of Shoals, Boulder Reef, Lobster Nursery and Edge of the Sea exhibits? 

— Meghan-Elizabeth Foster, Visitor Educator

Many visitors want to know where they can find the really big fish. Well, of course there are the tarpon and permits in the Giant Ocean Tank. But any discussion of really big fish at the Aquarium would be entirely incomplete with mentioning the goliath grouper. It's called goliath, after all!


A goliath grouper on exhibit in the Aquarium's Blue Hole exhibit

The goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) is one of 159 species of groupers living near coral reefs, rocky outcrops and even shipwrecks throughout the tropics. This large species can be found relatively close to home, living along the coast of Florida, through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the eastern part of the Atlantic. While many species can reach a few feet in length, the goliath grouper stays true to its name, growing over 8 feet long and 800 pounds during its 40 year lifespan. This makes it the largest grouper in the Atlantic!



Goliath grouper, photo: Albert kok via Wikimedia Commons

Though the Aquarium’s groupers are not nearly 800 pounds, they are still pretty impressive to look at. They seem even bigger once you see them in their Thinking Gallery home. Our goliath groupers can be found in the Blue Hole exhibit, located on the second floor of the Aquarium. Blue holes are cave formations that were once above water but were submerged over time. Though blue holes can be small and cramped, these solitary groupers love to live in these cozy, underwater caves and crevices. Known to be thigmotactic, groupers like to be in contact with a surface or an object around them and the tight quarters of the blue hole allows them to be in touch with the walls or other structures of the underwater caves.


Scuba diver with a goliath grouper at Dry Tortugas National Park, photo via Wikimedia Commons

In addition to being cozy, blue holes are a great spot to sit and ambush prey like spiny lobsters, shrimp, fish, octopus and young sea turtles. Since groupers don’t move around much, these holes provide a great home range where groupers spend most of their time, even protecting their territory by making an audible rumbling sound to warn other animals to keep away.

Our researchers have spotted goliath groupers in the wild in Belize! Did you know they can change from female to male during the course of their lifetime? Have you watched a neon goby clean their skin and mouth? Keep reading about these behemoths of the oceans and other residents of the Aquarium and our blue planet.

There's a lot more to goliath group than mere size.

Groupers have a very interesting change in lifestyle: As they get older, they change from being a female to a male! As groupers grow, they are first female when they reach sexual maturity. After a few years, the female will transform into a male. Scientists believe that this transformation is triggered when the grouper is the right age, they are in a group of animals that are about to spawn and there are fewer males in the population. Once this change happens, it’s permanent.



What’s the advantage of having this life cycle? The energy-consuming task of growing eggs is left to the younger fish that are healthy and strong while the larger fish that have proven their ability to survive can fertilize the eggs as males. It's a good way to keep populations strong through genetics!

Groupers gather together in spawning groups once they are ready to mate. These groups vary in number, size, and location. Once together, the females lay eggs that float to the surface after being fertilized. The eggs then float with ocean currents for 40 to 60 days and arrive at the nursery grounds just as the tiny groupers hatch out. These small groupers swim down to the bottom of the ocean and hide in sea grasses and mangroves until they get larger, remaining in the nursery area for 4 to 6 years. Once they are large enough, the groupers then leave the nursery area and then move offshore to join adult populations in coral reefs.


Take a closer look: Visitors can watch neon gobies cleaning the groupers in this video.

Watch the groupers in the Blue Hole exhibit and you may see them getting a bath! Groupers rely on small cleaner fish to stay free of parasites and other itchy conditions. The small one-inch neon goby (look for the small black and neon blue stripes) is the fish for the job, removing loose scales and parasites from the skin and gills of the groupers. The groupers get clean while the gobies get a snack and protection.


FUN FACT THREE
Groupers are the dominant, top-level predatory fish on many coral reefs and help maintain balance among fish populations and increase the biodiversity in an area. However, these groupers face many challenges, including the destruction of mangrove nursery habitats and increased human activity along coastlines. The chief concern for the goliath grouper? Overfishing. These fish are caught as food but is hugely impacted by overfishing because of their reproductive behavior: when they gather in the mating groups, fishermen remove the largest groupers from the population. As groupers reproduce slowly, this practice leads to rapid decline. It’s estimated that the species has declined by 80% in just 40 years, causing them to be considered a critically endangered species. Though there are regulations in the USA, Caribbean and Brazil prohibiting fishing, particularly in areas of marine preserve areas which offer protection for groupers during their mating season, there is still concern that fishing and poaching in other areas continues, making the future of the goliath grouper uncertain.

Learn how you can make smart seafood choices to protect the oceans and animals like the goliath grouper here. Watch the groupers patrol their blue hole home here. And learn more about these