Groupers of the World

Matthew Craig has been working on systematic ichthyology and conservation of reef fishes for the past 15 years. He has been project leader on many international collecting expeditions across the Indo-Pacific, South America and the Caribbean, and involved in research efforts to assess the status of impacted fish populations of the south-western USA. Dr Craig is currently based at the University of Puerto Rico.

Yvonne Sadovy de Mitcheson's research on coral reef fishes in the Caribbean, South-East Asia and the western Pacific has focused on those particularly vulnerable to fishing. With a PhD from the University of Manchester, she moved to the Fisheries Research Laboratory of Puerto Rico and for the past 20 years has been based at the University of Hong Kong. Professor Sadovy founded the IUCN Groupers & Wrasses Specialist Group and is Director of the Society for the Conservation of Reef Fish Aggregations.

Phil Heemstra , itinerant ichthyologist, studied at the University of Miami during the 1960s and early 70s. After early work on taxonomy of sharks of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, and various bony fishes in Miami, Dr Heemstra moved to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Australian CSIRO Fisheries Division at Cronulla before taking up a post at the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now SAIAB) in Grahamstown, South Africa, where he is now emeritus curator.

The IUCN Species Survival Commission (Groupers & Wrasses Specialist Group) has been responsible for compiling the available data so as to evaluate the status and present a summary of threats to each species. Groupers are increasingly being harvested for the chilled and live reef food fish trade, particularly in South-East Asia. Few grouper populations are managed and many species are experiencing serious population declines.