Banded Sea Krait

The banded sea krait, Laticauda colubrina, also called the yellow-lipped sea krait or colubrine sea krait, is a highly venomous snake of the family Elapidae found in tropical Indo-Pacific waters from India's eastern coast through Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, southern China, Taiwan and Japan's Ryukyu Islands, with sightings as far as Fiji, Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand. It has a black head with a distinctive yellow upper lip and snout, a bluish-gray body ringed in black with a yellowish belly, and a paddle-shaped tail for swimming; males average about 875 millimeters and females roughly 1.42 meters. Unlike the fully marine sea snakes, it is semiaquatic, hunting eels and small fish underwater with potent neurotoxic venom but returning to land to digest, rest and reproduce, and it is generally non-aggressive toward humans, biting only when provoked.