On the Great Barrier Reef with an olive sea snake (Aipysurus laevis)
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My sea snake research combines two of my favorite passions, venomous animals and doing ultra-deep scuba dives. This research has been funded by the Australia & Pacific Science Foundation. One of the things we have discovered is a remarkable streamlining that the sea snake venoms underwent upon the colonisation of the ocean. Even more intriguing is the independent, parallel occurance in both the true sea snakes (Acalyptophis, Enhydrina,Hydrophis, etc. genera in the Elapidae snake family) as well as the sea kraits (Laticauda genus in the Elapidae snake family).
There is more wrong information spread about sea snakes than just about any other type of snake. One 'fact' that is constantly repeated is that sea snakes have small fangs, so small that they have to bite you between the fingertips. Not sure where this one started from but its completely wrong. A little lucid thought should be enough to reveal this. Think about it for a minute, what do they feed on? Fish and eels. Which have tougher skin, us or fish and eels? Fish and eels of course. So, a sea snake has no problem getting through our skin. Indeed, the Stoke's sea snake can have fangs almost a centimeter long! Another wrong 'fact' constantly battered around is that sea snakes have tiny venom yields. The Stoke's is another good example of how wrong this is, they can deliver up to 150 milligrams! The most widely spread yet utterly incorrect statement is that sea snake venoms are vastly more toxic than land snake venoms. While sea snake venoms are certainly highly toxic, both the Inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) and Eastern brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis) are more toxic than the most toxic sea snake (the Dubois' sea snake, Aipysurus duboisii).
This isn't entirely suprising since sea snakes are simply good little Australian snakes that spent a day at the beach and never came home. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, they have undergone some remarkable adaptations since then such as paddle tails, valves on their nostrils, left lungs that run almost the entire length of their bodies (while the right lung is atrophied down to almost nothing). One of the most irritating adaptations to me as a scuba diver is that sea snakes can dump nitrogen through their skin while getting up to 20% of their oxygen through their skin. This means that no matter how fast they dive or come up, they can never get the bends!!! Having gotten bent once while chasing sea snakes into the deep, I find this remarkably inconsiderate (I'm just jealous of course). Even the taxonomical placement of sea snakes is usually wrong. They are simply elapid snakes that have colonised the ocean. They are not in a separate family but rather rooted deeply within the Elapidae family.
