Pale with large gold spots ringed in black, hunting over rubble and seagrass mostly at dusk and after dark.
To about 110 cm. Cylindrical and compressed at the rear with a short blunt conical snout grooved underneath, and blunt molar-like teeth in several rows. Pale tan to greenish with bright yellow spots, each one surrounded by a diffuse black ring. The tail tip is hard, finless and pointed.
The sharptail eel is the pair and the rings settle it: this fish’s spots are ringed with black and that one’s are not.
Nought to a hundred and fifty metres over grass beds, sand and coral rubble, foraging at night and sometimes moving beneath the sand. Snake eels burrow with the pointed snout and the hard sharp tail and go backwards and forwards with equal ease, so tail-first entry is real but not obligatory. The teeth are for crushing, not cutting.
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.
