Black moray
Fish · Last reviewed 2026-08-25
A moray restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos and nowhere else on earth — dark, up to ninety centimetres, and in the shallow water a shore angler fishes.
Safety: species that bite — can cause serious injury or death.
Catching Black moray
Everything here on fishing for it. Each entry opens the page behind it.
- Ground
The moray most English-language material describes is *Muraena helena*, the Mediterranean moray. The Canary fisheries directorate regulates three, and this is the one restricted to the islands themselves.
*Muraena augusti* is described by FishBase in a phrase worth quoting for how narrow it is: restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos. Not principally found there — restricted to them. It is a dark, uniformly coloured moray, purplish-brown to nearly black with a paler head in some individuals, reaching a FishBase maximum of 90 cm, living demersally from the surface to 250 m and usually shallower than 50 m.
It is a shore angler's fish in the way morays generally are: not fished for, and caught. It lives in holes in rock, comes out at night, and takes a bait meant for something else with total commitment. What arrives at the top of a harbour wall is then a metre of extremely strong, extremely flexible animal with a mouth full of long teeth and the ability to knot its own body for leverage.
The practical position is unambiguous. A moray cannot be unhooked safely by hand on a rock ledge. Cut the trace. A moray bite is a deep puncturing and tearing injury that becomes infected reliably, because a moray's mouth is a moray's mouth, and it needs medical attention rather than a plaster.
Morays are also good eating in the islands and are taken deliberately for it, which is a different activity conducted by people with the equipment for it and is not what happens when one arrives unexpectedly on a beachcaster.
How it is caught
Identification
No photograph of Black moray has passed identity review yet, so none is shown. FishingHQ publishes a species photograph only once somebody has confirmed the animal in it against the species record’s own diagnostic features.
- Scientific name
- Muraena augusti
- Family
- Muraenidae
- Water
- Saltwater
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Regions
- Western Europe
- Uniformly dark — purplish-brown to nearly black — without the bold pale marbling of the Mediterranean moray.
- The head is often paler than the body, sometimes distinctly greyish.
- The typical moray form: no pectoral or pelvic fins, a dorsal fin continuous with the tail, and small round gill openings.
- Large: FishBase records a maximum of 90 cm.
- Range is decisive — FishBase records it as restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos, so a dark moray in the Canaries, Madeira or the Azores is very likely this one.
Size
- Typical
- 50–70 cm
- Large
- 80 cm and over
Exceptional: FishBase records a maximum of 90 cm
Lifecycle and reproduction
Demersal and non-migratory over a depth range of 0 to 250 m and usually shallower than 50 m, holding in holes, cracks and caves in rock. FishBase gives it LOW resilience, which for a long-lived, slow-growing, site-faithful predator is what would be expected.
Not documented on the FishBase record. Morays generally spawn pelagically with a long leptocephalus larval stage; that is a family statement and is not asserted here about this species.
Feeding and senses
An ambush predator on fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, taken from a hole with a lunge. It hunts largely at night and by scent, which is why a bait left on the bottom in the dark on rock ground is the classic way to catch one by accident.
Smell above everything. A moray's eyesight is poor and its olfactory sense is acute, which is why it finds a bait in a hole in the dark and why fresh oily bait is what brings one out.
Through the year
Resident year-round in the same holes. Activity is governed by darkness rather than by season: the same mark that produces bream by day produces moray at night.
Distribution
Eastern Central Atlantic: restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos
This is a biological range — where the species occurs, not a prediction that you will catch one. To browse the fishing geography FishingHQ holds, start at fishing places.
Why anglers care
Caught rather than targeted by most shore anglers in the Canaries, Madeira and the Azores, typically at night on fish and squid baits over rock. It is regulated by the Canary fisheries directorate with a minimum landing size, and it is eaten in the islands where people know how to handle and prepare it. For a visiting angler its significance is entirely practical: it is the thing on the end of the line that changes what happens next.
Handling and returning
Do not attempt to unhook it by hand. Cut the trace as close to the fish as can be done safely and let it go back — a moray is worth far less than a hand. If it must be handled, that is a job for somebody with a grip, a control device and a reason.
Safety
Species that bite — Can cause serious injury or death
A moray bite is a deep puncturing and tearing injury from long backward-raked teeth, delivered by an animal that grips, twists and does not let go. It reliably becomes infected — marine wound infections from moray bites are well documented and can be serious — and the tendons and nerves of a hand are exactly what is in reach.
What reduces it: Cut the trace. Do not put a hand near the head of a moray on a rock ledge, in a boat or on a wall, under any circumstances, and do not assume a fish that has stopped moving has finished. Any moray bite needs cleaning and medical assessment for infection, not a plaster.
Worse when:
- At night, when most are caught, and when the fish cannot be seen properly on dark rock.
- On a wet ledge or a wall top, where the reflex to pull back has nowhere safe to go.
- When somebody tries to retrieve a hook or a lead rather than sacrificing it.
Where to go next
Similar and related fish
Where it lives
More fish
Not related to this page — just the rest of the section. There is little else joined to this subject yet, and a short page should still lead somewhere.
Sources and evidence
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Family, maximum size, depth range, environment, distribution and the IUCN assessment for Muraena augusti.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature (Conservation authority)Relied on for: The Least Concern assessment for Muraena augusti, assessed 18 August 2011.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Tallas mínimas de captura — Canarias: minimum landing sizes and closed seasons — Gobierno de Canarias, Consejería de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca — Dirección General de Pesca, with the Grupo de Acción Costera de Tenerife and the Cabildo de Tenerife (Government fisheries body)Relied on for: That the Canary fisheries directorate regulates the recreational landing of this species and therefore treats it as quarry, and the Canarian common name it publishes beside the scientific name.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Why the 4 connections on this page are here, and the sources
Similar and related fish
Backed by research — 2 connections
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Brown moray
Muraena augusti is uniformly dark, often near-black with a paler head, reaches 90 cm and is restricted to Macaronesia over 0 to 250 m; Gymnothorax unicolor is plain brown, reaches 100 cm, ranges into the Mediterranean and lives entirely between 0 and 20 m.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: The morphology, size, depth range and distribution that separate these two species from one another.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Mediterranean moray
Muraena helena is boldly marbled in dark brown and yellow; Muraena augusti is uniformly dark. Both occur in the eastern Atlantic, and only the black moray is restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos, which makes range the surest separation of the two.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: The morphology, size, depth range and distribution that separate these two species from one another.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How it is caught
Reported, not established — 1 connection
Reported, but without independent support. Recorded because it is in circulation, not because it has been shown to hold.
Ledgering
Marked ANECDOTAL deliberately. That a moray takes a static bottom bait after dark is not in dispute and nobody has documented it as a general practice, because it is not a practice — it is an accident, and one source for it is not the two a consensus claim needs. The edge exists so that a reader arriving from the method page meets the handling advice, and the species record is where that advice lives.
- Canary Islands regional angling guidance sites — Various Canary-based angling and island guidance publishers (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: That morays are encountered by shore anglers fishing baits on the bottom over rock in the Canaries.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Where it lives
Backed by research — 1 connection
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Rocky shores and reefs
Recorded as demersal and non-migratory from 0 to 250 m and usually shallower than 50 m, restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Muraena augusti.States this directlyPassage read and verified
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