Different Types of Eels That May You Don’t Know

Eels are a group of snake-like fishes with a slender elongated body that is poorly developed fins and scaleless.

They are the order of Anguilliformes that has about 15 families, 140 genera, and over 800 species in the world.

Eels live in all ocean where generally in the tropical Atlantic and indo-pacific in the shallow and deep water, however, one family of eels live in freshwater.

The typical of freshwater eels are having gill slits ventrolateral, and edible as food. The body covering the color of the deepwater species is dark grey to black, while the tropical reef species is patterned and colorful.

Here are the different types of marine and freshwater eels that some of them that you have not known yet.

Snyder’s moray

Snyder’s moray was firstly discovered by snyder on 1904. This type of eel is origin to the pacific ocean.

The body is small which is around 4 inches in length with reddish to brown and spots. This eel is also called fine spots moray because of its small spotted.

Giant moray

As the name implies, giant moray is a very large eel with small eyes, and dark spotted. The body of giant moray reaches about 9.8 feet in length and over 65 pounds in weight.

This eel is carnivorous that feeds on small eels, crustaceans, and fishes. The giant moray is commonly found in the warm water of Indo-Pacific areas.

Slender giant moray

Slender giant moray is among the largest moray eel in the world with yellow colored that can be found in the indo to pacific ocean.

The spotted slender giant moray lives mostly in the west. This type of eel grows up to 13 feet in length.

Snowflake moray

Snowflake moray is commonly found in the warm water of indo-pasific ocean. This eel is also called cloud moray that lives in the depth about 7 to 100 feet of water.

As the name suggest, it has slender elongated body with bright yellow, black, and white marks. The diets of this eel are small fish and crustaceans.

Zebra moray

Zebra moray can be found in the Indo-Pacific ocean, Madagascar, Polynesia, and Japan. The name of this eel comes from its dark and white stripes along its body.

It mostly feeds the kinds of marine animals, including mollusks, crustaceans, and urchins.

Fimbriated moray

This unique marked eel can be found in Indo-pacific and also in the rocks and coral of crevasses. It generally lives in the depth around 3 to 160 feet of water.

The covering body of the Fimbriated moray is yellow and green with white black marks and a series of threads fringe-like. This eel grows about 30 inches or 80 cm in diameter.

White spotted conger

The name of this eel comes from the numbers of white spots lining the body. Most whitespotted conger lives in the shallow of water that can be found in the northwest pacific ocean. It generally grows up to 3 feet or 1 meter in length.

Grey conger

Grey conger is the smallest ells which about 30 to 60 inches. It commonly lives in the depth about 200 to 400 of water that feeds finfish.

Longfin African conger

Longfin African can be found in the indo-pasific areas that it naturally lives in the depth of water over 260 feet. As the name implies, this eel has a long fins on the top of its body and black thick strips.

Beach conger

Beach longer is a grey eels with glisten and less of mark of the body. The length of its body is about 4 feet and commonly lives in the northwestern pacific ocean.

Electric eel

Electric eel or Electrophorus electricus is the different species of most all eels due to its electrical ability. this eel produces about 500 volts of electricity to self-defense from the predator and to kill the prey.

Electric eel frequently swims up to the surface to take the air for breath. an electric eel can be found in South America. the covering body of electric eel is a dark grey that it can grow up reaching 8 feet in length.

Black spotted eel

Black-spotted eel belongs to the family of Mastacembelidae or spiny eels. People sometimes get the mistake of the juveniles of this eel with others, however, the adult is covered black spots on the body. This eel can grow up to 20 inches and its life span about 18 years old.

Green moray

Green moray has a large mouth, less of the pectoral, longfin, and bright green to yellow color. The eyes are white small with a little dot in the center. This type of eel is carnivorous which commonly feeds small marine animals.

Half-banded spiny eel

As the name implies, this type of eel is small with thin strips band-like covering on top of the body and a tapering tail. Half-banded spiny eel generally grows about 8 inches that are nocturnal. It is a freshwater eel that can live in the tank.

Ophichthidae

This eel is also called snack eel due to its body pattern. Ophichthidae is a marine eel with black and bright yellow strips covering the body and lack of fins.

It lives in the tropical to warm ocean, however, some can move to the rivers. Ophichthidae naturally feeds the marine animals such as worms.

Dragon eel

Based on the color covering the body, dragon eels divided two species, violet goby (Gobioides broussoneti) and redfish (Erpetoichthys calabaricus).

Dragon eels are not true eel that has two fins on the backside of the head, that can grow about 15 inches and the average lifespan of it is around 10 years.

Peacock eel

Peacock eel or Macrognathus siamensis is a small eel with greenish-brown and bright yellow strips that covering its body. This eel is included of freshwater eel which grows about 11 inches.

Cutthroat eel

Cutthroat eel generally lives in the depth 12,100 of tropical and temperate water. The body is grey with two spink on the backside of head.

Tire eel

Tire eel or Mastacembelus favus is freshwater eel that can reach 28 inches. This eel has typical back patters covering the body and a black line across the eyes.

Snipe eel

Snipe eel mostly lives in the depth of about 300 to 600 meters of water that it can be found in all ocean wide world. This eel grows about 39 to 79 inches in length. Snipe eel has the unique jaws and tail. The jaws are beak-like elongated, such a spine, while the tail is thick tapering point elongated

Zig zag eel

The science name of this eel is Mastacembelum armatus, which commonly grows up to 35 inches. Zig zag eel appears as snipe eel at glance, however, the location of patterned body on both are different.

The body of zig-zag eel is patterned only on two-thirds of the body. It has a lifespan for more than 18 years.