Beaked Sea Snake

The beaked sea snake, also called the hook-nosed sea snake or common sea snake, is a highly venomous sea snake common throughout the tropical Indo-Pacific. It is implicated in more than half of all bites caused by sea snakes, as well as the majority of envenomings and fatalities. Its range takes in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, the seas off South Asia including Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia (Wikipedia, general species account).

The snake is usually uniformly dark grey above with whitish sides and underparts, while young ones are olive or grey with black transverse bands, broadest in the middle. One quoted description gives a head and body length of 1,110 mm and a tail of 190 mm. The name Vala Kadiyan, used in Tamil and Malayalam, means net biter. No status is given for it in the Sri Lanka National Red List 2012 list checked.