Hugh Paxton’s blog spent a few uncomfortable minutes with a sea snake off Phi Phi Thailand. It was a bit ironic. I’d been paddling around lamenting the utter lack of interest and the bleached coral and the over fishing and thinking “There is sod all to see in this sea” when I surfaced and right there, six inches from my mask was a sea snake. Sea snakes are far more venomous than their terrestrial cousins but they are not possessed of a great gaping mouth. Their bite only works if they get you somewhere where your skin is thin. Like the webs between your fingers, or your ears. This I knew. And this is what made my Phi Phi sea snake encounter all the more disturbing. I was excited to see it and it was certainly intrigued by me. It came closer. I became rather conscious of my ear lobes. Two of the damn things. Both within easy nibbling distance. I thought, “Hugh, get a grip, don’t thrash around and alarm this snake. Use your hands to gently pull away.”
I then thought of webs – thin biteable webs of skin between my fingers – but I thought “Hugh, just pull away slowly. Keep your webs away from this fellow and do something clever with your feet.”
It worked and did not.
The intriguing thing about pulling away from a sea snake is that your reverse motion sucks the snake along with you. The more I gently retreated the more my snake was drawn in. I began to think about other thin membranes I was in possession of. I had a mask on my head. But it was on the top of my head. My eyelids, were they in jeopardy? My lips were kissing distance distant. And my throat? What about my throat?
The encounter didn’t last more than three minutes. And it stopped when I stopped moving and doing clever things with my feet. The snake swam not quite over my shoulder but it felt like it and then it cleared off in a lazy ripple. It was a graceful thing. A speckled band.
I wouldn’t describe the encounter as relaxing but it added interest and that’s what life’s about.
Here’s a sea snake from Bunaken Cha Cha resort in Sulawesi. The finest dive resort this blog has ever visited.
Sea Snake

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