An eel-shaped fish with six pairs of barbels round the snout and chin, out of its hole only after dark.
An elongate brown fish reaching about 60 cm, tapering to a point at the rear, with the dorsal, caudal and anal fins joined into one continuous fringe running round the back of the body. The scales are small and the whole animal has a soft, slightly slack look. Six pairs of barbels hang from the snout and the chin, and they are the character that separates it at a glance from the morays and the snake eels it is otherwise confused with. Eels have no barbels of this kind and no continuous fringing fin of this shape.
By day it stays inside caves, under ledges and in rubble, well back and usually out of sight. After dark it comes out and works the sand and rubble in front of its hole, using the barbels over the surface of the sediment to find small fish and crustaceans. Most sightings are on the first hour of a night dive, and a fish caught in a beam retreats steadily rather than bolting.
Recorded across the Indo-Pacific from the shallows to about 100 m. The family it belongs to, the cusk-eels, is largely a deep-water group, and this is one of the few members a diver is likely to meet.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.