SEA SNAKES or (Eel) ?

SEA SNAKES


Sea snakes are real, air-breathing snakes with forked tongues and body scales. They shed their skins, just like the land snakes that we are more familiar with. Sea snakes are not peculiar kinds of eels. Eels are fish with gills, while sea snakes are true reptiles with lungs.

Sea snakes are air breathers probably descended from a family of Australian land snakes. They inhabit the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific and are highly venomous. Thirty-two species have been identified in the waters about the Barrier Reef in Australia. They seem to congregate in certain areas in the region about the swain Reefs and the Keppel Islands, where the olive sea snake (Aipysurus laevis) is a familiar sight.

Sea snakes have specialized flattened tails for swimming and have valves over their nostrils which are closed underwater. They differ from eels in that they don't have gill slits and have scales. Due to their need to breathe air, they are usually found in shallow water where they swim about the bottom feeding on fish, fish eggs and eels.

The yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamis platurus) is pelagic, and is seen on occasions floating in massive groups. Fish that come up to shelter under these slicks provide food for the snakes. Occasionally these yellow-bellies get washed up on beaches after storms and pose a hazard to children.

Yellow-bellied sea snakes

Aggressive only during the mating season in the winter, the sea snake is very curious, and they become fascinated by elongated objects such as high pressure hoses. Advice here is to inflate your BC so as to lift away from the bottom and the snake. Provoked snakes can become very aggressive and persistent requiring repeated kicks from the fins to ward them off.

Persistent myths about sea snakes include the mistaken idea that they can't bite very effectively. The truth is that their short fangs (2.5-4.5mm) are adequate to penetrate the skin, and they can open their small mouths wide enough to bite a table top. It is said that even a small snake can bite a man's thigh. Sea snakes can swallow a fish that is more than twice the diameter of their neck.

Most sea snake bites occur on trawlers, when the snakes are sometimes hauled in with the catch. Only a small proportion of bites are fatal to man, as the snake can control the amount of envenomation, a fact probably accounting for the large number of folk cures said to be 95% effective.

Intense pain is not obvious at the site of the sea snake bite; 30 minutes after the bite there is stiffness, muscle aches and spasm of the jaw followed by moderate to severe pain in the affected limb. There follows progressive CNS symptoms of blurred vision, drowsiness and finally respiratory paralysis. A specific antivenin is available.

Olive sea snake Aipysurus laevis

This olive sea snake is the most common sea snake species found on coral reefs around Australia. It also occurs in New Guinea and New Caledonia. It is highly venomous and very curious. Fortunately it has a placid disposition and is unlikely to bite unless provoked.

Turtlehead sea snake
Emydocephalus annulatus

Most sea snakes are venomous but this species, the turtleheaded sea snake, is not. It has evolved to eat fish eggs and thus lost its need and ability to be venomous.

SEA KRAITS

Sea kraits are a type of sea snake. Sea snakes are divided into two subfamilies, laticaudinae and hydrophiinae, with the former of the two distinguished from other sea snakes by the fact they are amphibious (lives on land and water), versus aquatic (never leaving the water). Sea kraits are ovoviviparous, returning to land to lay their eggs, versus other viviparous species that bear their young in the water (subfamily hydrophiinae, aquatic sea snakes). Amphibious sea kraits, members of subfamily laticaudinae, have specialized ventral scales for crawling on land. Unlike eels, sea snakes are reptiles and have scales. This one is about 18 inches (46 cm) in length.

All 50 or so species of sea snakes are venomous, and some are known to have venom ten times as strong as rattlesnake venom, making them among the most potentially dangerous of all animals. Fortunately for divers, they have short fangs and are usually quite docile; this one scarcely paid attention to my stalking, even as I placed my camera lens only about an inch from its head to get some photographs. It returned to the surface almost exactly every 15 minutes from a depth of about 35 feet, breaking the surface for only a split second to take a breath of air. On the bottom, it slowly crawled along, poking its head under coral crevices and under debris, foraging for small fish or perhaps eel prey. Most sea snakes feed this way, though at least one species, Pelamis platurus, is pelagic. A sea snake's paddle-shaped tail is useful for swimming, but otherwise these reptiles look very much like their land cousins, even down to the forked tongue it uses during its search.

Most cases of people being bitten by sea snakes involve fishermen bitten when sorting through a catch from a net. The venom is composed of powerful neurotoxins (affect nervous system) and sometimes myotoxins (affect skeletal muscles), with a fatal dose being about 1.5 milligrams. Most sea snakes can produce 10-15 mg of venom.

ARE SEA SNAKES DANGEROUS?

Potentially yes but not really. There are lots of long wiggly things that live in the sea and most of the ones that you will encounter are actually not sea snakes. The sea snake you are most likely to see in Fiji whilst goggling is the Banded/Yellow-Lipped/Colubrine Sea Krait (Laticauda colubrina). These are fairly small, being about half to one and a half meters in length and generally not much thicker than a man's thumb. They are however the sixth most venomous snake in the world (behind Australia's Taipans, King Browns and Tiger snakes), with fangs able to deliver a mixture of of powerful neurotoxins and myotoxins which affect the nervous system and skeletal muscles.

The chances of being bitten by one of these sea kraits is minimal though and it really would be a treat to see one while out goggling. They are amphibious reptiles which differ only from land-based snakes in having specially adapted paddle-like tails for swimming and diving. They must surface to breath every fifteen minutes or so and will be observed snooping and poking around the shallow reef edge in search of eels to eat. They search for using their forked tongue as a sensor and have little or no interest in you. They pose no threat unless agitated or provoked and even then would find it hard to deliver their venom as their jaws are very small and their fangs extremely delicate.

Sea kraits split their time equally between land and sea, moving between one environment and the other every ten days, returning to land in order to digest their food, get it on, lay their eggs and shed their skin, which they must do frequently as they are vulnerable to water-borne parasites.

SEA SNAKES AND EELS ARE ALMOST THE SAME BUT THEY ARE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT, THAT'S WHY PEOPLE GET CONFUSED BETWEEN THOSE TWO.

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