Banded sea krait (yellow-lipped sea krait)
Laticauda colubrina
A calm, yellow lipped banded reef snake that hunts eels and then rests on land. Watch it glide by and never touch it. Sightings are never guaranteed.
Least Concern (IUCN, 2009) means it is not at high risk of extinction worldwide today.
Photos show the species, not always the places on this page.
Length
Females usually about 1.4 m (4.7 ft), up to about 1.7 m (5.6 ft); males usually about 0.9 m (2.9 ft)
Weight
About 0.4 to 1.2 kg (0.9 to 2.6 lb), males lighter; one typical weight is not reliably measured
Next to a person
A male is about waist to shoulder height on a standing adult; a big female can be close to a person's height, but always slender, thinner than an arm
What it eats
Mainly eels. Bigger females take conger eels, smaller males take moray eels.
Around people
Potentially dangerous, respect
How it lives
The banded sea krait lives in two worlds. It hunts in the reef, pushing its head into holes to find eels, and then it comes back to land to digest, shed its skin, mate and lay 4 to 20 eggs in rock cracks. Adults spend about half their time on land. It is very venomous, but it is not aggressive, and bites on people are rare.
Where it goes
Resident. Each krait stays faithful to its home island or even its own piece of shore. In Fiji, snakes on two islands only 5.3 km apart lived as separate groups, and snakes moved away returned home almost at once. It hunts at sea and then returns to its home shore.
We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.
Populations
Because kraits stay so close to home, each island holds its own small group, and in Fiji the males even grew to different sizes on two nearby islands. In New Caledonia, the yellow banded krait is now a separate species, the New Caledonian sea krait (Laticauda saintgironsi), described in 2006.
Meet it respectfully
Watch from a calm distance and never touch, grab, chase or block a krait, in the water or on the beach. Let it swim up to breathe, and leave resting snakes alone. Most bites happen when people handle kraits or free them from nets. First aid guidance in Australia and New Zealand says to treat a sea snake bite like a land snake bite: get the person out of the water, keep them still and call emergency help.
Fun fact
Tap the bulb to light it up.
The yellow upper lip and yellow snout help tell it apart from the blue-lipped sea krait, which has a dark lip.
Females are much bigger than males and hunt large conger eels, while males catch smaller moray eels.
Unlike many sea snakes, it lays its eggs on land.
In Fiji, sea kraits on two small islands only 5.3 km apart turned out to be two separate groups. Snakes that researchers moved went back home almost at once.
A sea krait needs dry land: it comes ashore to digest its meal, shed its skin and lay eggs, and it spends about half of its adult life out of the water.
Banded sea krait (yellow-lipped sea krait) in the Ocean Atlas
Places we have researched where this animal is recorded. It is never guaranteed, and some places are for watching from the boat only.
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Australia
Fiji
India
Indonesia
Japan
Malaysia
Myanmar
New Caledonia
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Singapore
Solomon Islands
Taiwan
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Tonga
VanuatuSources for this page
- NZ Herpetological Society, Laticauda colubrina
- Shetty & Shine, 2002, Conservation Biology
- Brischoux, Bonnet & Pinaud, 2009, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Gherghel et al., 2016, ZooKeys
- ANZCOR Guideline 9.4.5, First aid management of marine envenomation
- GBIF occurrence records
- SeaLifeBase, Laticauda colubrina
- Reptile Database, Laticauda colubrina
Facts checked 26 September 2026. Photos: Unsplash licence, or Creative Commons as shown on each photo.
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