---
title: Funnel-Nostril (Enchelycore schismatorhynchus)
scientific_name: Enchelycore schismatorhynchus
common_name: Funnel-Nostril
taxon: Moray eel
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-25T20:03:42.887Z
updated: 2026-08-18T06:57:10.051Z
tags: Funnel-Nostril, Enchelycore schismatorhynchus, Moray eel, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/funnel-nostril
---

# Funnel-Nostril (*Enchelycore schismatorhynchus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Moray eel (*Muraenidae*)
- **Size:** up to 120 cm
- **Depth:** 5-35 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Reef and rocky ground, in crevices
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- front nostrils drawn out into long tubes at the tip of the snout
- jaws curved so the mouth does not fully close, teeth in view
- pale to yellowish body, sometimes with dark mottling
- up to 120 cm

Look at the tip of a moray's snout and you will find two short tubes sticking forward. They are nostrils, and in this species they are drawn out into pronounced funnels, which is what the name is about.

The arrangement is a working nose and it is worth understanding. Water enters through the front tubes, passes over a folded sheet of sensory tissue inside the head, and leaves through a second pair of openings near the eyes. The flow is continuous, driven by the same jaw pumping that moves water over the gills, so a moray sitting in a hole with its mouth working is not just breathing - it is smelling, constantly, on a running current.

That is the sense the animal actually lives by. Moray eyesight is poor, and experiments have shown they can find food by scent alone in complete darkness while ignoring it in plain view. The tubes at the front are a design for sampling water ahead of the head before the head commits to a hole.

This is a large, pale, rarely recorded moray with the curved unclosing jaws of its genus, and it goes deeper than most of the shallow species here.

## Also known as

- **English:** White-margined Moray, Brown moray Eel, Bentjaw Moray
- **French:** Murène bordée de blanc, Murène à bordé blanc
- **German:** Weißrandmuräne
- **Spanish:** Morena de Margen Blanco
- **Czech:** muréna světlooká
- **Japanese:** ヒダウツボ, Hida-utsubo, Hidautsubo
- **Chinese:** 咖啡色鰻, 糬鰻, 紡車索
- **Russian:** Белоглазая энхеликора

## Scientific synonyms

- *Gymnothorax schismatorhynchus* (Bleeker, 1853)
- *Muraena hemprichii* Klunzinger, 1871
- *Muraena schismatorhynchus* Bleeker, 1853

## Range

Republic of Mauritius

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/funnel-nostril)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*