Serpents of the sea
FATAL SEA SNAKE bites are extremely rare in Australia. But circumstances were tragically against 23-year-old prawn trawler deckhand Harry Evans, from Dorset in England, when he was bitten just over two years ago while plying his trade in remote waters in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
An inquest in January last year documented the tragedy. It noted that the ship was north of Vanderlin Island, more than five hours from onshore medical assistance, when shortly after 8am on 4 October 2018, the nets were lowered back into the vessel and the captain noticed Harry shaking his hand in pain. Looking in the nets, the skipper found what he guessed to be an elegant sea snake, about 50cm long. He grasped it by the tail, tossed it over the side and made a call to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, while Harry’s arm was wrapped in a compression bandage. Initially, the deckhand said he felt fine. But by 10am his condition had begun to deteriorate.
The ship managed to rendezvous with medical assistance by 2.30pm, but shortly afterwards Harry was declared dead. It was a heart-breaking tragedy that was well documented by the Australian media.
Associate Professor Kate Sanders, a sea snake expert at the University of Adelaide, acknowledges that despite the venom of some of the world’s sea snakes being extremely potent, it’s “incredibly uncommon” for bites to be fatal. The first fatality recorded in Australia was in 1935 and Harry Evans’ death is thought to have been the only one since.
SWIMMERS, SNORKELLERS AND divers rarely experience anything more than a sea snake curiously investigating them. But trawl fishers are at greater risk. They encounter sea snakes almost daily in their nets, and the reptiles, Kate says, “are very stressed by the time
