"There's a snake in my boat!"

[shadling]

Somehow our group brought up a krait in one of our BCDs while diving off Sabang in this past December. No one knew anything about it until my wife screamed "Snake!" and jumped to the opposite side of the boat; crawling along the floor under the seats was a 3-4 ft krait. The boat captain and divemaster (along with the rest of us) got pretty excited, but managed to get snake off the boat and back into the water without injury to man or beast.

The divemaster thought that perhaps the krait was in the area where we surfaced and came over to rest on us, or that it followed us to the surface and then got into someone's gear.

Has anyone heard of snakes joining divers on the surface and getting into their gear? The boat captain and dive master were both locals and said they'd never heard of, or seen a snake get into a boat via someone's gear. It was pretty sluggish crawling along the deck and not acting aggressively but I think it might have behaved differently had someone stepped on it or reached into their BCD to square away some gear and touched it inappropriately.

 

[t-mac]

Unique experience! Indeed, inappropriate touching of the snake would have been ill advised in this case!

 

[Steve_C]

Has anyone heard of snakes joining divers on the surface and getting into their gear? .

Yeh, but they were humans.

Great story.

 

[NYCNaiad]

Wow. Never heard of that before.

 

[WetPup]

 

[shadling]

We had the GoPro with us but had handed it up to the boat captain when we were getting ready to re-board....so it was not in hand when the snake made itself known. My wife is quite nearsighted and dives with a prescription mask. We'd just gotten the dive master aboard, and we'd just starting back to shore. My wife is squinting and looking for the dive bag which has her glasses in it when she said she feels something brush against her heel; she says it felt kind of squishy. She looked down and saw something long and stripped crawling slowly underneath her towards the bow of the boat. She still hasn't found her glasses so she's staring at this thing that's just brushed against her foot and she's trying to figure out what the heck this blurry, long, stripped, squishy, crawling thing on the deck of the boat is...when it all becomes clear. This all happened so fast; it couldn't have been 15 seconds from the boat starting back to shore to her discovering the snake.

 

[frogfone]

Not a big snake but just as deadly! This happened to us in Alor last year. Quite common - apparently they like the heat from the outboard engines. This little one was lucky not to be killed as it was under the outboard cover.

Sharon

 

[Adam Grose]

Wow!! That's one dive trip you will NEVER forget.

 

[Buliwyf]

River? Trees?

On the Suwannee river in FL, the snakes use the water to escape danger. They'll jump from the trees and sometimes be unlucky enough to land in your canoe.

My experience with Cottonmouths is that they aren't running toward me, they're running toward the water, I'm just standing in their path as they flee. Have had one zip right between my feet one time, and splash in the river behind me.

 

[kelemvor]

Required.