Related Topics: Environment & Biodiversity
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Two new species of marine eel were discovered and documented by Estuarine Biology Regional Centre (EBRC) of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) at Gopalpur-on-sea in Odisha.
New Species
‘Gymnothorax andamanensesis’
- It is a short brown un-patterned moray eel.
- Two specimens of this eel were caught at 2-metre deep waters in the south Andaman coast.
- Till now, 10 species of short brown unpatterned moray eels have been discovered in the world, out of which two were found in Indian waters.
- With this new discovery, the number of short brown un-patterned moray eels discovered from the Indian coast has increased to three.
‘Gymnothorax smithi’
- It is a white-spotted moray eel.
- Its first specimen was found from the 200-metres deep waters of the Arabian Sea in 2011.
- Recently, a few more specimens of this undiscovered species were collected from the southeastern Arabian Sea, off the Kerala coast.
Marine Eels
- They are mostly found in shallow waters but some of them live offshore in sandy or clayey bottoms ranging up to 500 metres.
- Till now, 49 species of moray eel from 10 genera had been reported from Indian waters, and their species numbers have increased to 50 with the new addition.
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