It's illegal to catch one, but the iconic Queensland groper is destined for dinner plates across Australia and Asia.
The fish, called a giant grouper in other parts of the world, is classified as a threatened species and a no-take fish in Australian waters.
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However, Queensland government researchers in the state's far north are working to establish the species as a mainstay of commercial fish farms.
The Cairns-based research program has recently succeeded in rearing juvenile sized fish from eggs spawned in captivity - the first time it has been done in Australia.
They will now be transferred to commercial fish farms across north Queensland, where they will continue growing.
Northern Fisheries Centre principal scientist Richard Knuckey said the Queensland groper grew much faster than most species of fish, adding to its commercial potential.
"I think they've got a fantastic future as they've got a much faster growth rate than barramundi for example," he told AAP.
"There is huge potential for farms to make a lot of money over a short period of time."
Dr Knuckey expected fish farms to harvest the species at a range of sizes, at plate-size as is typically the case with barramundi, or at larger sizes for filleting.
However, he said fish farms were unlikely to let them grow as large as in the wild, where they can measure more than 2.7 metres and weigh more than 300 kilograms, because they became difficult to work with at that size.
He said while there was currently no market for the fish in Australia, due to its no-take status, the species, which is distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific region, was popular in Asian cooking.
He said groper typically sold for $20-40 a kilogram, with a global market worth about $800 million.
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