A pale snake eel covered in dark spots, restricted to the eastern Pacific offshore islands and moving openly over sand and rubble.
To about 49 cm. Slender, tan or cream, with numerous large brown to nearly black spots along the sides and at the base of the dorsal fin, and smaller spots on the chin and throat. The dorsal fin has a white margin and the anal fin is plain. The snout is rounded and the pectoral fin is very short.
It is a snake eel, not a moray, and the tail settles it: snake eels have a hard pointed finless tail tip for burrowing backwards, where a moray has fin running all the way to the end. Morays also have no pectoral fin. Among the snake eels, the tiger snake eel has smaller and denser spots than this one.
It lives on shallow rock and sand between 1 and 20 m and is often out in daylight, nosing over open sand, or lying with just its head out of a burrow. It reverses tail-first into the sand when alarmed. It moves slowly while hunting and is easy to approach and photograph. It is harmless.
Its range is remarkable: the Revillagigedo archipelago and Clipperton, and nowhere else. The name comes from Isla Clarión. It is one of very few species on this site that a diver can effectively only see at the destination it is listed under.
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.
