Tom Smedley,
Since you brought up the subject of the i.d. for this moray, I looked into this a little more. I'm pretty certain it is a honeycomb moray, Gymnothorax saxicola. An older name for this species is "ocellated" moray. According to Humann's 2nd edition, the reticulate moray is characterized by a black spot on the gill covering, and it doesn't have the dark spots or stripes on the dorsal that the honeycomb moray has. This rules out the reticulate. Hoese's "Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico" and Bob Shipp's "Guide to Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico" both discuss that there are two very similar species of moray in the northern Gulf of Mexico that occur inshore around jetties - the blackedge and the honeycomb or ocellated. They are hard to distinguish, but the blackedge occurs in the Western Gulf from Alabama to the west, whereas the honeycomb occurs in the eastern Gulf. The photo in Hoese's book for honeycomb moray looks very similar to my photo. Based on all this, I think the moray in my photo is the honeycomb. Hoese (the most recent book of the three I have) mentions that the name "ocellated" moray is now applied to a third species of moray that occurs father south. Formerly, ocelllated was the name given to all three of these species.
I will have to change the caption on my photo to "honeycomb moray".
By the way, I think the best reference for fish i.d. off the FL Panhandle is Shipp's book. It focuses on coastal AL and the FL Panhandle. Unfortunately, I don't think it is in print any more. I bought my copy in a book store about 7 years ago, and I have not seen another since. I looked on Amazon a while back, and Shipp wasn't listed. My usual process for identifying fish for Destin is to look in Shipp first, then go to Humann for better pictures to confirm the i.d.
Thanks for the positive feedback on the photos.
