A faint-hearted sea-snake

I don’t remember now where I saw this but I read somewhere that the most poisonous snake on earth is Belcher’s sea-snake. I guessed since it was a sea snake that it must be found in a warmer climate, and in the end my curiosity led me to investigate and unsurprisingly it’s to be found in south-east Asia and Oceania. I also very quickly discovered that although very, very, very poisonous it doesn’t wear the most poisonous crown, and it is also rather timid. It is also called the faint-banded sea snake which I misread as faint-hearted sea-snake, an altogether different creature (if it existed). The main accidents with Belcher’s sea-snake happen when they are brought up in fishing nets and in a panic bite the fishermen. Even then, the timid creature doesn’t usually bite hard enough to poison its ‘victim’ enough to be fatal. It’s not a very big snake, up to about a meter long, and is stripy – it’s yellowish with vague greeny stripes, and it sounds altogether quite insignificant apart from being so poisonous. It likes to dine on small fish and burrowing eels.

With it’s name of Belcher it’s tempting to think after eating a couple of small fish or a delicious burrowing eel, it lies around burping, but obviously the name comes from someone else, Sir Edward Belcher, who was a naval officer and explorer. He was born in Nova Scotia in 1799 who had a varied career as a surveyor and explorer, captain and admiral. Although he achieved some remarkable feats of exploration, he sounds a dreadful man, a very harsh master and unpopular. However, he did have the timid but very poisonous sea-snake named after him, hydrophis belcheri.

Here is some more information about the faint-banded (and maybe faint-hearted) sea snake:

https://coffeeandcreatures.co.uk/2020/01/21/faint-banded-sea-snake-facts/