Its name means many-spotted, and the spots are all anyone has to go on.
The burrowing morays are a taxonomist's problem. They have no fins to count rays on, no scales to count rows of, no distinctive body shape - they are all brown ropes - and the characters that actually separate them are things like the arrangement of sensory pores on the head, the number and placement of teeth, and the count of vertebrae, none of which can be seen on a living animal or a photograph. What is left for anyone working underwater is the pattern, which varies with age and with the individual.
So the group has been split, merged, renamed and split again, and a fair number of the species in it are known from a handful of preserved specimens. Any identification of a snakemoray from a photograph should be read as a best guess.
This one is at the readable end: pale brown under large, well-spaced dark blotches, distinctly bigger and fewer than in its relatives, up to seventy-eight centimeters, in shallow rubble.
The genus. Uropterygius Rüppell 1838 - uro (tail). ETYFish
The species. Uropterygius polyspilus (Regan 1909) - polý- (many) + spílos (mark or spot). ETYFish
- pale brown with large, well-separated dark blotches
- blotches larger and fewer than in the other snakemorays here
- round body, almost finless, blunt tail
- up to 78 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known to this species. It may be affected by increasing coastal development and habitat degradation in some parts of its range, but further research and monitoring would be needed.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
