---
title: Unicolor Snake Moray (Uropterygius concolor)
scientific_name: Uropterygius concolor
common_name: Unicolor Snake Moray
taxon: Moray eel
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-25T18:48:15.443Z
updated: 2026-08-17T21:35:40.402Z
tags: Unicolor Snake Moray, Uropterygius concolor, Moray eel, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/unicolor-snake-moray
---

# Unicolor Snake Moray (*Uropterygius concolor*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Moray eel (*Muraenidae*)
- **Size:** up to 50 cm
- **Depth:** 0-10 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rubble and reef flats in very shallow water
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- uniform brown with no markings whatsoever
- round in cross-section, fins reduced to ridges
- very shallow, often in the top few meters
- up to 50 cm

It has no pattern at all. Uniform brown, from snout to tail, with nothing on it a field guide can use.

That is worth a moment, because pattern is expensive and almost every fish on the reef has one. Camouflage, warning, species recognition, mate choice - all of it needs markings, and all of it needs an eye to see the markings. An animal that spends its entire life inside rubble, in the dark, meeting other members of its species by smell, has no use for any of it. So the pattern is gone, and what remains is the cheapest possible skin.

The same logic runs through the whole burrowing branch of the family. The fins are reduced to ridges, the body is round instead of flattened, the eyes are small, and the color is plain. Everything not needed inside a rock has been given up.

It is a fifty-centimeter eel of very shallow rubble, sometimes in water barely deep enough to cover it, and it is recorded far less often than it presumably occurs.

## Also known as

- **English:** unicolor snake moray, Brown Moray Eel, uniform reef eel
- **Czech:** muréna stejnobarvá
- **Japanese:** コゲウツボ
- **Russian:** Обыкновенный рифовый угорь, Обыкновенный уроптеригиус
- **TGL:** Payangitan

## Scientific synonyms

- *Anarchias vermiformis* Smith, 1962
- *Gymnomuraena concolor* (Rüppell, 1838)
- *Muraena unicolor* (Kaup, 1856)
- *Uropterygius unicolor* Kaup, 1856
- *Uropterygus concolor* Rüppell, 1838

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Republic of Mauritius, South Africa

---

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