Buried to the head on open sand, with only a spotted yellow face showing.
A snake eel to about 75 cm, the head yellowish to olive and marked with irregular dark blotches and spots, the body paler and banded, the tail ending in the hard point the family uses to burrow backwards. Almost all encounters are with the head alone: the animal lies buried with the snout and eyes clear of the sediment, mouth working, and the rest of it in a tunnel below. The banded snake eel Myrichthys colubrinus by contrast hunts in the open and is boldly ringed in black and white.
Buried eels are frequently used as perches. Small gobies, shrimps and cleaner species will sit on the exposed head, and a photograph of a snake eel with a passenger on it is a standard muck-diving frame. Feeds at night on crustaceans and small fish taken from the burrow entrance. Recorded from about 3 to 30 m on open sand and silt. It withdraws entirely if the sediment around it is disturbed, so the approach is made from a distance and low, and the sand within a metre of the head is left alone.
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.
