Lukoschek, 2006:

"Sea snakes are also under threat.  They are inadvertently caught in huge numbers as by-catch by commercial prawn and fish trawlers in northern Australia. Like all tropical marine species, they are threatened by impacts on coral reefs, such as coral bleaching, overfishing and pollution.

Sea snakes live in the warm tropical waters of the Indo West Pacific but are not found in the Caribbean or Atlantic waters.  The three 'primitive' species occur in the coastal regions of northern Australia.  Australia's coastal waters have a high diversity of sea snake species (between 17 and 21 species).

The most alarming direct impact on sea snakes is trawl fishing. One study has calculated that in 1990 the Northern Prawn Trawl Fishery, which operates west of Cape York, caught approximately 81,000 sea snakes as by-catch. A second study came up with an even higher estimate of 91,000 sea snakes for 1991. No matter how you look at it, that is a lot of sea snakes, particularly taking into account the fact that these studies did not include by-catch from Queensland's trawl fishing industry. It is true that sea snakes occur in large aggregations, but killing large numbers of individuals each year is going to have some kind of impact.

 The direct impact of trawling, combined with the indirect impacts of degraded tropical marine environments such as coral bleaching, the destruction of soft sediment habitats from trawling and over-fishing, means that the outlook for sea snakes in Australia is not good.  Even more alarming is the fact that Australia's coral reefs and other tropical marine environments are relatively pristine and are experiencing low impacts compared with the heavily impacted tropical marine environments in South-East Asia.

Australia is privileged to have the only remaining near-pristine tropical marine environments on the planet, so we are responsible for affording them the highest possible protection.  This will not just benefit Australia; it will benefit the world." 

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Citation and/or URL

Lukoschek, V., 2006, Sea snakes: survival of the slipperiest 2006, Australasian Science, 27(5) 32-34.

Spatial Coverage

 Northern Australia

Temporal Coverage

 Up to 1996

Update Frequency

 Not applicable 

Other Information

 None