It’s a snake! No wait, wrong ocean
Taken by Mike Barrett
Scuba diving in Carlisle Bay Marine Park is a great place to spot one of these Golden Spotted Snake Eels. Although found on all reefs these ‘snakes’ are most often seen scavenging for food in holes in the sand, but they will never stray too far from shelter. For these reasons they are often seen in Carlisle Bay between the wrecks, anchors and pylons.
They have a nice set of teeth, but unlike their pacific look-a-likes known as sea snakes, these eels are not venomous. Golden spotted eels will typically allow divers to approach, just watch your buoyancy and keep your fingers to yourselves.
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Comments
This little guy was not at all shy, in fact I was just lying there in the sand and he came right up to the lens and stared at his reflection for a few seconds.
With subjects like these I like to empty all the air from my BCD to give me more stability on the bottom. It means going down with more weight than I need to, but allows me to stay perfectly still on the sand.
Is your ID right? I’d say that’s a sharpnose eel, not a golden spotted.
hi…i was wondering if these snakes were found in aruba…i was snorkaling at baby beach and i have been researching for 1 year trying to find out what i saw, it was neon blue and looked like the picture above
i saw this same snake in aruba so i would say yes
we have just seen this guy off the reef near the amaryllis hotel. he was not so small! must have been 3 foot long. nice set of teeth!
much excitement as thought it was a sea snake at first.managed to keep all bodily functions intact until looked picture up on web site to realize not poisonous, still pretty cool!
I saw the same type as the picture whilst snorkeling off the Folkstone Marine area. I also saw similar again during a dive off Oisten’s. I followed and photographed but could not get his full length in the frame. He was about 1m long. Charming chap and too busy looking for food to bother about me.
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