Sea Hagfish Identification Guide

Key identification features

• Elongated, scaleless, eel-like body in pinkish-grey to slate-blue tones
• No jaws and no true eyes, only faint light-sensing skin patches
• A single nostril at the very tip of the blunt snout
• A fringe of short barbels (tentacles) surrounding the slit-like mouth
• A single row of slime pores running along each flank
• One continuous low fin fold along the tail rather than paired fins
• Can reach roughly 60-80 cm, large for a hagfish

Common look-alikes

• Other North Atlantic hagfish are rare in the same range, so barbel count and slime pore spacing are the main way to separate close relatives.
• Lampreys look similarly eel-shaped but have a round sucker-like oral disc ringed with horny teeth, which hagfish completely lack.
• Eels have jaws, paired fins, and scales embedded in the skin, none of which a hagfish shows.

Where you'll see one

Sea Hagfish live on cold, soft-sediment seafloors of the North Atlantic, from shallow coastal shelves down past 1,000 meters, where they burrow into mud and scavenge dead or dying animals.