Garden eels

정원장어(청줄)

An eel that anchors its tail in a sand burrow and stands up to sway in the current, with hundreds growing together like a garden of grass. It snaps up passing plankton and slips into its hole when a diver approaches.

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At a glance

Class: Fish
Diet: Meat eater (carnivore)
Habitat: coral reefs

Quick answers

Where does the Garden eels live?

It lives in coral reefs of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans.

What does the Garden eels eat?

Its diet: meat eater (carnivore).

Garden eels are small fish that live in burrows on the sea floor in warm oceans. The group has 36 known species, and most live in the Indo-Pacific region. They belong to the conger eel family. Most are less than 60 centimetres long, and the biggest reach about 120 centimetres.

They get their name from the way they stand in the water. Each eel keeps its tail end anchored in a hole in the sand and pokes the rest of its body out to snap up passing plankton. Seen together, hundreds of them look like shoots of grass swaying in a garden. A colony can cover an area as big as an acre and hold several thousand eels.

How do they live?

Garden eels are filter-feeding fish in a way: they face the current and grab the tiny animals drifting by. They almost never leave their burrows, even while eating. If a diver or predator comes close, they slip into the hole in a flash. Because of this, it is hard to get near them. Species vary in colour and size. Since they live in groups, the many heads rising from the sea floor look like blades of grass.

Which kinds exist?

Scientists place garden eels in the subfamily Heterocongrinae, which has two groups called genera: Gorgasia, with fourteen species, and Heteroconger, with twenty-four. They are infaunal fish, which means they live in the sea floor itself, in burrows. Most of the species live in the Indo-Pacific, but some are found in warm ocean water elsewhere in the world, such as the Caribbean Sea. Their colours and sizes differ from species to species, so divers can tell many of them apart.

Fun facts

Garden eels live in colonies of hundreds, each poking out of its own burrow in the sand.
A colony can have thousands of eels.
The biggest garden eel is about 120 centimetres long.
They almost never leave their burrows, even to eat.