Manuk Island’s famous sea snakes in Indonesia are at one of the largest and most important seabird colonies in the whole South China Sea and Sulu Seas. We visited to find out more and see them for ourselves!
This is the latest post from our Pindito expedition to the Banda Sea. Our first snorkel/dive today was on the reef plateau next to the island. It was chance to see Manuk’s infamous residents, it’s Chinese or Black-banded Sea Kraits.
There are few places on Earth where you can witness them in such large numbers. They really are abundant too! Just try diving or snorkelling without accidentally kicking one or having them bounce off you from time to time.
Does the idea of swimming with snakes scare you? It shouldn’t. Sea snakes are quite nonchalant and completely harmless. They go about their business without any care about humans and don’t attack.
They also have to breathe air, which means they regularly come to the surface where our snorkeling guests hang out, before returning to the deep to feed. When they breed, these species have to visit the land to lay eggs. Most other sea snakes give birth to live young at sea.
Kraits would occasionally appear out of nowhere, having been hidden among the coral. In the evening they seemed to all come out at once and we even got to see them feeding cooperatively with the Blue-spotted Trevally.
Manuk Island is surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of ocean open up to 7,400m deep. We have no idea why Manuk Island’s famous sea snakes are here but they are clearly really important to the local ecology.
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