''Gymnothorax pikei'', or Pike's moray, is a rare

moray eel Moray eels, or Muraenidae (), are a family of eels whose members are found worldwide. There are approximately 200 species in 15 genera which are almost exclusively marine, but several species are regularly seen in brackish water, and a few are f ...

found in the western

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

and

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

s.''Gymnothorax pikei''
Fishbase.org It was first named by Bliss in 1883. The species is represented by only two specimens – the type specimen discovered in 1883, and a second found in 1962. It is very similar to two other species, ''

Gymnothorax berndti The y-patterned moray, y-patterned moray eel, or Berndt's moray (''Gymnothorax berndti'') is a deep-water moray eel found in coral reefs in the Pacific and western Indian Oceans at depths to 300 m. It was described by John Otterbein Snyder in 19 ...

'' and ''

Gymnothorax ypsilon The Y-bar moray,Common n ...

'', and is distinguished from the latter by fewer black lines and the presence of horizontal black lines towards the tail, and differs from both species in the absence of a white margin along the

anal fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as se ...

References

pikei Fish described in 1883 {{muraenidae-stub