Hagfishes eat mostly dead fishes and worms. They use their rasping teeth to burrow through the body wall or enter through the mouth, gills or anus of larger animals.
Hagfishes are able to produce large quantities of slime. These fishes can tie their bodies in a knot and then run the knot down the length of the body to remove slime.

Alternative Name/s
The Broadgilled Hagfish is also known as the New Zealand Hagfish.

Identification
The Broadgilled Hagfish has an eel-like body that lacks scales. It has vestigial eyes, six barbels around the mouth and six or seven gill openings on the lower sides. The tail is paddle-like. There are rows of slime glands on the lower sides. Like other hagfishes, it lacks jaws but has a mouth lined with horny teeth.
It is grey to brown above and sometimes paler below. The gill openings have white borders.

Size range
The Broadgilled Hagfish grows to 83 cm in length.

Distribution
The species occurs in temperate marine waters of southern and eastern Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia it occurs off southern Queensland to southern New South Wales.
The map below shows the Australian distribution of the species based on public sightings and specimens in Australian Museums.  Source: Atlas of Living Australia.