Banded, convict and spotted snake eels - know the difference

Out on A Swim

‘Out on a swim’ is a coral reef blog that tells the stories of the characters who live under the waves and what has caught my eye when ‘out on a swim’ in the lagoons of Norfolk Island. It is also a record of the difficulties Norfolk Island’s reef faces, like many others around the world, as a result of the poor water quality that has been allowed to flow onto it.

This page shows the most recent blog posts. For the complete catalogue, visit the ‘Out on a swim index’ page.

This blog is rated in the Top 20 Coral Reef Blogs in the world.

The last day of winter, but here on the island spring is already with us. The bees are furiously busy with the clover in our paddock and the lavender hedge, while the tips of the frangipani trees are pushing out new leaves.

Glorious sunshine and winds from the southwest for a couple of days this week meant I was battling against it while swimming at the weekend!

A beautiful banded snake eel, Leiuranus semicinctus, popped into view on Saturday (top image). I haven’t seen any of these, apart from one dead one a few weeks ago, over winter, so it was wonderful to see this handsome fellow the other day.

I often get asked if these are sea snakes and if they are dangerous. They are in fact, as their name suggests, eels, and I find them to be very docile and will generally swim away or dive incredibly fast into the sand when approached too closely.

We have a few different snake eels: spotted, banded and convict. I’ve included photos of all three here so you can see the difference. It has been suggested to me that we may have a couple of different subspecies of these – which are, as yet, undescribed – because a couple look a little different. This isn’t something I know much about, but it would be exciting beyond belief if we did have some unique ones here.

Below are images of the three different types of snake eels found in Norfolk Island’s lagoons.

Ocellate snake eel - Myrichthys maculosus

Banded snake eel - Leiuranus semicinctus

Convict snake eel - Leiuranus versicolor

A convict snake eel, Norfolk Island

One thing I love to watch is the bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, hard at work. You often see fish queueing up for a once-over from this little guy. This morning it looked like they were all getting in early for a spring clean! I’ve included a few photos of this busy beaver cleaning some yellowstripe goatfish, Mulloidichthys flavolineatus (left) and a Coral Sea gregory, Stegastes gascoynei (right).

Bluestreak cleaner wrasse with goatfish

Bluestreak cleaner wrasse with a Coral Sea gregory

June 20, 2026

From coral scar to aatuti farm

Aatuti are bold little algae farmers, but how does one of their farms begin? Over the past year, I have been following several coral patches as small white scars became algal footholds, then larger defended patches. I still cannot say what caused the first wounds, but the photo sequences show something fascinating: on a reef where algae is already gaining ground, even tiny changes on the coral surface can become part of a much bigger story.

June 15, 2026

Norfolk’s water quality – when action is reported as outcome

A recent Australian Government media release presents investment, monitoring and catchment works as progress on Norfolk Island’s water quality. Some of that work is useful, and some of it was badly needed. But activity is not the same as proven improvement. This post looks at Kingston sewerage, wetlands, cattle, acid sulfate soils, groundwater and reef health, and asks whether Emily Bay and Slaughter Bay are actually being better protected.

June 14, 2026

How surgeonfishes got their name

Surgeonfish are named for the sharp little scalpels near their tails, but on Norfolk’s reef their more useful work happens at the other end. Pencil surgeonfish, bluespine unicornfish and their relatives help browse algae across the reef – a small daily job that becomes very valuable on an algae-rich lagoon reef like ours.

May 28, 2026

A shrimp storm

While setting my research cams last week, I swam into what looked like an underwater snowstorm. It appeared to be the aftermath of a mass moulting event, with large numbers of tiny, translucent shrimp-like exoskeletons drifting together near the surface.

Kingston dredging: what happens when a reef does not fit the framework

This correspondence with DCCEEW is about more than one dredging proposal. It is about what happens when an ecologically distinctive place is assessed through standard tools that do not always make its most important values easy to see. I am publishing it here because that is something we need to be aware of, both on Norfolk Island and more broadly in Australia.

May 24, 2026

Kingston dredging: the project advances, the questions remain

Kingston dredging is edging closer, and the paper trail is growing. This post brings together earlier correspondence with the Department and the latest media release so readers can see what has been asked, what has been answered, and what still remains unclear about the project, its rationale, and the protections proposed for the reef.

May 17, 2026

The lime-green coral in Slaughter Bay – a 40-year paper trail

Green Mountain – the name I give this coral in my database – is a coral I’ve photographed for years as I swim past. Then I found its backstory in the Norfolk Island National Parks archives: a rough map, reused paper, a note in the margin – ‘still thriving’. That’s how baselines begin.

April 5, 2026

What Norfolk Island’s reef tells us about environmental blind spots

The Kingston dredging proposal on Norfolk Island raises a bigger question than dredging alone: how well do standard environmental assessment tools capture the real significance of a remote and unusual reef system like Norfolk Island’s?

March 30, 2026

Hammer coral time!

Hammer corals have unique tentacles that are large, fleshy, and tubular; these terminate in a ‘T’-shaped, hammer-head or anchor. Beneath all these softly waving tentacles is an extraordinary skeleton structure, which helps define them as a large polyp stony coral.

March 24, 2026

Norfolk Island’s fishes: drifters, residents and the ones still missing

Norfolk Island’s fish fauna reflects both connection and isolation. Some species may arrive from elsewhere as drifting larvae, some populations appear to persist locally, and some fishes known from islands on either side of Norfolk have still not been recorded here. This post looks at what old survey work, regional checklists and genetic studies suggest about that more complicated picture.