White with dense dark spots, the commonest moray on Caribbean reef and out on open ground more often than most.
To about 1.2 m, cream to yellow-white densely covered in small dark spots that run together into a mottle towards the tail. It is the commonest moray on Caribbean reef. The purplemouth moray shares the ground and is separated by the mouth lining, which is purple-grey rather than pale, and by the dark edge to the fins.
It is out of its hole more often than most morays, hunting over rubble in daylight as well as at night, and it will swim in the open across sand between coral heads. It hunts by smell, and the poor eyesight that goes with that is the whole hazard: a hand pushed into a crevice is not seen and is bitten. The teeth point backwards, so the bite tears rather than punctures and it does not release easily, and the wound becomes infected readily. Do not feed one, and do not put a hand anywhere you have not looked.
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.
