Its mouth does not shut. The jaws in this genus are bowed outward like a pair of calipers, so even at rest they meet only at the tip and the teeth stay permanently exposed - long, thin, backward-raked needles in several rows, including a row down the roof of the mouth.
That is not a defect. A moray that eats fish has one problem above all others: holding onto something slippery and thrashing in a space too tight to maneuver. Curved jaws that cannot close mean the teeth are already in position at every angle, and prey that touches them is caught before the bite finishes. The trade is that the animal wears its weapons in the open.
It makes this a moray to leave alone. FishBase classes the species as traumatogenic, meaning capable of a serious injury, which for a seventy-centimeter eel means a hand that went where it should not have.
It is genuinely rare here and it goes deeper than most, recorded past sixty meters, so encounters are few and almost always a head in a crack with a mouthful of visible teeth.
The genus. Enchelycore Kaup 1856 - énchelys (eel) + core (pupil of eye). ETYFish
The species. Enchelycore bayeri (Schultz 1953) - Honours Frederick M. Bayer. ETYFish
- jaws strongly curved, so the mouth never fully closes and the teeth stay in view
- long, slender, needle-like teeth, several rows of them
- dark body, often with pale flecking on the head
- up to 70 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known to this species, however, their population may be affected by habitat loss in some parts of its range.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
