Black saddles that stop at the flanks, which is what separates it from the banded snake eel.
To about 66 cm, cream to white with a row of black saddles along the back. The saddles are the identification: broad over the spine, tapering down the flanks, and open underneath, so the belly stays pale. In the banded snake eel Myrichthys colubrinus the dark bands usually close right around the body. The two are similar in shape, size class and habit and are confused often enough that a good many photographs of one are captioned as the other; the underside settles it. Both are in turn taken for the sea krait Laticauda colubrina, which surfaces to breathe and has a flattened paddle tail — an eel does neither.
Shallow sand, rubble and seagrass in lagoons and sheltered bays. Most records are from under 10 m, though the species has been taken to about 70. It lies buried with only the head showing, or entirely under the surface, and comes out over open sediment after small fishes and crustaceans; when alarmed it reverses tail-first into the sand rather than swimming off. It is common across the Indo-Pacific and thinly recorded from muck sites, which probably reflects how much of its time is spent under the sediment rather than how many there are.
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.
