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.
The genus. Echidna Forster 1788 - échidna (vi). ETYFish
The species. Echidna polyzona (Richardson 1845) - polý- (many) + zona (belt or girdle). ETYFish
- 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
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known to this species, although it is probably impacted by habitat loss and coastal development in some parts of its range.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
