DATELINE: 23rd August 2001

SOCIABLE EELS
A holidaying Briton has come across one of the most surprising sights of his diving life - two different species of eel living cheek by jowl in a single rocky burrow.
Kevin Teasdale was enjoying a diving holiday on Majorca, going out each day with Big Blue Dive Centre of Palma Nova.
"We were diving at a place called El Toro [The Bull], which steps from 7m to 18m and then goes down to 45m," Kevin told Divernet. "When we got to nearly the deepest point, at 42m, we came across two moray eels and a conger eel living together in one hole."
Kevin took some photos of the happy cohabitants and, when he arrived home, made enquiries about their social habits. Several people agreed they thought the situation "rather strange".
Meanwhile Divernet has made its own enquiries.
"In the Mediterranean there's a brown eel, known as the chocolate eel, which is easily taken for a conger," Juan Romero, Curator at Plymouth's National Marine Aquarium, told Divernet.
"Also, there's an eel called the murena, which has mixed greeny brown and black colouring and is longer than the chocolate eel. This, in turn, can be taken for a moray."
Chocolate and murena eels, said Juan, are known to cohabit, and it is almost certainly these creatures that Kevin and his buddies saw snuggled up under a Majorcan rock.

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