---
title: Barred Moray (Echidna polyzona)
scientific_name: Echidna polyzona
common_name: Barred Moray
taxon: Moray eel
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-25T18:08:04.265Z
updated: 2026-08-17T22:29:07.191Z
tags: Barred Moray, Echidna polyzona, Moray eel, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/barred-moray
---

# Barred Moray (*Echidna polyzona*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Moray eel (*Muraenidae*)
- **Size:** up to 72 cm
- **Depth:** 0-20 m
- **Diet:** Durophage
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef flats and rubble, often in the top few meters
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- young boldly banded in dark brown and white
- bands break up and fade with age; old adults are almost uniformly dark
- blunt snout, short head, no long fangs
- up to 72 cm

A young one is unmistakable and an old one is anonymous, and it is the same fish.

Juveniles are ringed in hard-edged dark and pale bands from head to tail. As the eel grows the bands widen, blur, and break into fragments, and a large adult can be almost uniformly dark brown with only a ghost of the pattern left near the tail. Anyone identifying morays from photographs runs into this constantly: two animals that look like different species turn out to be one at different ages.

Like the zebra moray it belongs to the branch of the family that eats hard-shelled animals. The teeth are short and blunt, the snout is stubby, and it works crabs and shrimp out of the rubble rather than hunting fish.

It lives shallow, often in water you could stand in, on reef flats and rubble, and it hides in the sort of small hole nobody thinks to look into. That combination - abundant, shallow, and invisible - is why it is one of the commonest morays here that almost nobody has seen.

## Also known as

- **English:** barred moray, Many Banded Moray Eel, Girdled Reef Eel
- **French:** Murène à barres, Congre noir
- **Italian:** Murena barrata, Murena fasciata
- **German:** Ringelmuräne
- **Spanish:** Morena Barrada
- **Portuguese:** Moreia listrada
- **Czech:** Muréna mnohopásá
- **Japanese:** シマアラシウツボ, Shima-arashi-utsubo, Shimaarashiutsubo
- **Chinese:** 多帶蛇鱔(多帶海鱔), 多環蝮鯙, 節仔鰻
- **AF:** Balk-bontpaling
- **DA:** Båndmuræne
- **FI:** Vyömureena
- **FIJ:** Bonu
- **TGL:** Payangitan
- **TH:** ปลาหลดหินลายเหลือง
- **VI:** Cá Chình

## Scientific synonyms

- *Echidna fascigula* (Peters, 1855)
- *Echidna leihala* Jenkins, 1903
- *Muraena fascigula* Peters, 1855
- *Muraena polyzona* Richardson, 1845
- *Poecilophis pikei* Bliss, 1883

## Range

Comoros, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/barred-moray)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*