Animal Species:Ocellate Snake Eel, Myrichthys maculosus (Cuvier,
1816) As its standard name implies, this largely tropical
species is spotted. What it doesn't convey is that the spots
change with age. Spotted Snake Eel The Ocellate Snake Eel has
dark spots on a cream-coloured background. The arrangement of
spots changes as a fish grows. Juveniles under 25 cm in length
have one row of spots on the upper sides. Fish between 30 cm and
50 cm in length (such as that in the images) have spots along
the midline alternating with spots on the upper sides. Fishes
over 50cm in length have two or three rows of spots on the upper
sides of the body and several rows of smaller spots along the
lower surface. The species grows to 1 m in length. It occurs in
marine tropical waters of the Indo-West Pacific. In Australia it
is recorded from the offshore reefs of north-western Western
Australia and the northern Great Barrier Reef south to the
central coast of New South Wales. The map below shows the
Australian distribution of the