A garden eel colony on Galapagos sand, standing out of the burrows to feed and withdrawing as a diver crosses.
To about 70 cm. Extremely elongate and compressed, brown with pale blotches on the head and front body, the lateral-line pores set in white blotches, and the gill opening sitting in a black patch. Only the forward third is normally above the sand.
The black gill patch and the white-blotched lateral-line pores are the characters. A second garden eel has been recorded sharing a colony with it at Gorgona Island in Colombia.
Three to ninety metres by one source and ten to thirty by another, on clean sand, in large colonies with each eel in its own burrow, feeding on zooplankton in the current.
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.
