Yellow-bellied Sea Snake

The yellow-bellied sea snake, Hydrophis platurus, is a highly venomous, fully marine snake of the subfamily Hydrophiinae within the family Elapidae, related to cobras and taipans but adapted to spend its entire life at sea, mating, feeding and giving live birth in open water. It shows a sharply bicolor pattern, yellow below and brown or black above, with a flattened paddle-like tail for swimming, males reaching up to 720 millimeters and females up to 880 millimeters, and adaptations including reduced ventral scales, a laterally compressed body, valved nostrils that keep out seawater, and the ability to exchange gas through its skin during long dives. It ranges across the entire tropical Indo-Pacific to Costa Rica, southern California and northern Peru, is the only sea snake to reach Hawaii, and has occasionally turned up in the Atlantic through range dispersal rather than as a native population.