Admittedly I am not even an amateur animal lover but the newest of neophytes so please forgive me if this is a stupid question. Are these two eels related? Do eels change thier appearance when growing into adulthood? The skin has a similar pattern but everything else was different. The yellow colored one is barely over an inch wide and was hiding pretty well, the larger one was sticking 3 feet out of a reef wall and couldnt back up to save his life (although he tried and tried and tried).
Small eel - no idea what kind it is
Big Eel
I'm pretty sure the second (larger) eel is Gymnothorax javanicus. I do not have any good guesses as to the second but I would be very surprized if they were the same species. The first eel has a dark base color with light colored spots while the second has a ligherter base color and with darker spotts.
Might the first one be Enchelycore lichenosa? Mosaic moray?
Cheers,
Marli
Thanks for the reply. I did a search for G. Javanicus and took a look at about 8 pictures or so on the web. What struck me as odd was that no two pictures looked alike? I finally found one that resembles the Eel I saw (the green headed one) at http://www.envirosea.com/gallery/v/reeffis...moray3.jpg.html that looks similar.
I see alot of eels and am looking for a good ID source, do you have a printed source that is a reliable guide?
did a search for G. Javanicus and took a look at about 8 pictures or so on the web. What struck me as odd was that no two pictures looked alike?
I see alot of eels and am looking for a good ID source, do you have a printed source that is a reliable guide?
And it is not unlikely that all 8 were in fact G. javanicus. That is half of the fun of identifying marine creatures. There is so much variation.
There are a lot of ID books. Most of them are reasonably reliable, but none are very comprehensive. Most books have only one or two pictures of each species. When each species may have several regional variations as well as differences between larva/Juvinile/intermediate/adult male/adult female. For an id book to be comprehensive, many species would need more than 10 pictures of each species.
Eels are particularly problematic. Since they are mostly cryptic they are not as well documented as other types of fish so there are many undescribed/documented species/variants.
The most comprehensive ID refrence I know of is actually online rather than a book. www.fishbase.org
