WHATSTHATFISH
Turtles & sea snakes

Turtle-headed Sea Snake

Emydocephalus annulatus

Also known as: Banded Sea Snake, Egg-eating Sea Snake, Ringed Sea Snake, Ringed Turtlehead Sea Snake, Snake Eel, Turtlehead Sea Snake

LCLeast ConcernIUCN Red List, 2010
Adult
@blogie · Dayang Beach Dive Site, Talikud Island, Island Garden City of Samal, Philippines · May 20121 / 2
01

Overview

Found singly, or in groups during the day, in shallow waters foraging for food by moving slowly across burrows and crevices, around coral heads, over coral and rocky reefs.
They feed on fish eggs mainly from bennies, damselfishes and gobies.

Although venomous these sea snakes have such small mouths they are not really a danger to divers.

Sea snakes have a slat excreting gland under their tongues which helps to avoid excess salt accumulation. They also shed their skin every two to six weeks, more frequently than land snakes. they do this by rubbing their lips against coral or other hard substrate to loosen the skin which is then anchored to the substrate as the snake slowly crawls forward, leaving the skin inside out and left behind. By shedding their skin sea snakes rid themselves of organisms such as algae, barnacles and bryozoans. (Heatwole 1999).

02

How to identify

COLOURS
Pattern
stripes
Behaviour
solitary

Tap any trait to see other fish that share it.

03

Habitat & where to find it

  • Range · Indo-West Pacific
  • Country only · 2
LIVES IN

Found singly, or in groups during the day, in shallow waters foraging for food by moving slowly across burrows and crevices, around coral heads, over coral and rocky reefs.

04

Adult photos 2

05

Discussion 3

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3 comments

  • Mark· 19 Aug 2019

    Here’s a video, hopefully someone can confirm if that its a Sae Snake! https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Vhe32Hgvm/?igshid=1tdb9y5dz9oe7

  • colin whyte· 14 Oct 2018

    Are you quite certain of your claim that these snakes are found in the Atlantic and Med? My understanding and others that the Atlantic, Med and Red Sea have no sea snake population.

  • fishx6Top Contributor· 15 Oct 2018

    I was going on the information given by Sealifebase an affiliation of Fishbase it could be wrong, there again many fish end up in odd places - see our bloghttps://www.whatsthatfish.com/blog/right-fish-wrong-place/ https://www.sealifebase.ca/summary/Emydocephalus-annulatus.html

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Taxonomy

  1. familyHydrophillidae
  2. genusEmydocephalus
  3. speciesEmydocephalus annulatus Krefft, 1869

SourcesWoRMSWikipedia