This species inhabits nearshore and offshore coral reefs, coralline lagoons, seagrass beds, mangrove swamps, coastal sand and rock areas to depths of 75 m (Carpenter and Allen 1989). It is occasionally observed in small aggregations (Randall 1995), but adults typically occur singly. It primarily consumes molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and less often polychaetes and fishes (Carpenter and Allen 1989). The maximum total length is 87 cm (Assadi and Dehghani 1997). This species undergoes a protogynous sex change that occurs over a wide range of year groups starting with age 1, well before maturity (McPherson et al. 1985). Longevity is estimated to be 14-26 years (Mathews and Samuel 1991, Edwards and Shaher 1991, Dalzell et al. 1996, Grandcourt 2006, Ebisawa and Ozawa 2009). Off the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, the age of 50% ovarian maturity was 4 years (Ebisawa and Ozawa 2009). This species forms spawning aggregations (Salem 1999). In the southern Arabian Gulf, spawning occurs between April to May, the mean size and age at first sexual maturity for males and females to be 19.4 cm and 0.5 years for males and 28.9 cm and 2.7 years for females, and maximum age was 11 years (Grandcourt et al. 2006 and 2010). When applying an age at first reproduction of 3 years and longevity of 11 years, its estimated generation length is 7 years based on the following equation recommended by the IUCN Red List methods: Age at first reproduction + (Age at last reproduction -“ age at first reproduction)/2.