Garden Eel

ID points

• Most of the body buried in the sand, only the upper half standing out
• Grows in dense colonies, like grass sprouting from the sand
• The whole colony withdraws into the sand at once when alarmed

Basics

Family

Congridae

Length

35–40 cm

Depth

7-45 m

Regions

Indo-Pacific reefs · Caribbean & W. Atlantic

Distribution

Sandy bottoms of tropical coral reefs

Habitat

Sandy slopes near tropical reefs

Diet

Zooplankton

Easily confused with

Sea PenShaped like a quill pen stuck into the sandBlue StarfishEntirely saturated cobalt blue, with no other markingsCrown-of-Thorns StarfishA dozen to twenty arms, covered all over with long venomous spines

Fun fact

Garden eels emerge from the sand in their hundreds or thousands, swaying in unison with the current as they pick plankton out of the water; from a distance the colony looks like a garden waving in the wind. Startle them and every one slides backwards into the sand at once, and the whole garden vanishes.