Catfish's Maw

Catfish's Maw is the fifth dungeon in Link's Awakening. The entrance of this dungeon, which looks like a giant blue catfish, is located within Martha's Bay. The entire entrance is surrounded by rocks, and thus cannot be accessed by swimming on the surface alone. Link will need to dive down at a certain spot on the left side of the rocks and swim through an underwater tunnel to this dungeon. Since Link needs the Flippers to swim and dive, it's possible for him to enter Catfish's Maw before even clearing the dungeon before it, Angler's Tunnel. The interior of the dungeon is mostly sandy floor with brown walls. There also seem to be a lot of purple crystals growing in certain rooms, which can be destroyed by Link's sword. Despite this dungeon being in the middle of a bay, it is actually dry inside, with a few rooms having shallow water and only three rooms being flooded (two of them being flooded side-view rooms).

The main tool of this dungeon is the Hookshot, which is necessary to access certain rooms and needed to defeat the boss, Slime Eel, who guards the fifth Instrument of the Siren, the Wind Marimba.

This dungeon has at least five mini-boss battles. The first four all involve Master Stalfos who guards the Hookshot object, but needs to be defeated four times. Once defeated, he will move into another room and must be searched for in order to battle again. All of the rooms in which Link battles him can easily be identified by the skull-shaped tiling on the room's floor. Each of these four rooms also has an unmovable block or blocks, the number of blocks points out when Master Stalfos would appear there. For example, the first room Master Stalfos is in has a single block, but once defeated he will move into the room with two blocks and so on. The other mini-boss are the Gohmas, who can only be reached once Link has the Hookshot and are considered the 'true' mini-bosses of this dungeon.

When looked at on a map, the dungeon is in the shape of what seems to be an eel, likely a reference to the dungeon's boss. The name of this dungeon is simply a reference that the exterior is in the shape of a giant catfish, and that the entrance is the 'maw of the catfish'.

Trivia

 * The entrance to this dungeon resembles the Giant Catfish who gives Link the Quake Medallion in A Link to the Past.
 * The Ocean Floor entrance above the surface in Spirit Tracks is also shaped like a Giant Catfish.
 * The Catfish's Maw concept may have had some influence upon the conception of the dungeons Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly and Jabu-Jabu's Belly, where the idea was taken one step further by moving the action inside a living marine being.