Garden Eel

Photo: terence zahner · CC BY-NC

Large colonies of brown garden eels inhabit the sandy slope at Ilha do Pelado, their slender bodies waving in the current like a field of living grass as they feed on drifting zooplankton. Approach must be slow and deliberate — any quick movement sends them retreating into their burrows simultaneously, collapsing the colony in seconds. At full extension a garden eel reveals only the front third of its body, keeping the rear half anchored in a burrow that may extend 50 centimeters into the sand.