---
title: Plain Moray (Gymnothorax hepaticus)
scientific_name: Gymnothorax hepaticus
common_name: Plain Moray
taxon: Moray eel
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-25T18:18:15.903Z
updated: 2026-08-15T08:08:41.441Z
tags: Plain Moray, Gymnothorax hepaticus, Moray eel, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/plain-moray
---

# Plain Moray (*Gymnothorax hepaticus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Moray eel (*Muraenidae*)
- **Size:** up to 100 cm
- **Depth:** 0-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef, seagrass and rubble, often in turbid water
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- uniform brown body with no pattern at all
- paler below, darker toward the tail
- short snout, small eye
- length up to 100 cm

A plain brown moray with no markings whatsoever, a meter (3 ft) long, in shallow water that is often too murky to see it in anyway.

Which raises the question of how it hunts, and the answer is that eyes barely come into it. Morays have poor vision and enormous nostrils - two pairs, the front pair in raised tubes, drawing a constant stream of water over an olfactory organ that fills much of the head. A moray tracks prey by smell the way a dog does, and it can find a wounded fish in a reef it cannot see at all.

That is also why they turn up at spearfishing, and why feeding them is such a bad idea: an animal that associates human smell with food and cannot see well enough to distinguish a hand from a fish is a predictable accident.

It takes fish, octopus and crustaceans at night, and spends the day wedged into a hole with only its head out.

## Also known as

- **English:** Liver-colored Moray Eel, Liver-coloured Moray
- **Hebrew:** ניבן גבה-סנפיר
- **Portuguese:** Moréia-hepática
- **Czech:** muréna rudomořská
- **Chinese:** 白边裸胸鳝, 白邊裸胸鱔, 糬鰻

## Scientific synonyms

- *Lycodontis hepaticus* (Rüppell, 1830)
- *Muraena cinerascens* Rüppell, 1830
- *Muraena hepatica* Rüppell, 1830

## Range

Eritrea, Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/plain-moray)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*