Ijima's Sea Snake

Ijima's Sea Snake (Emydocephalus ijimae) is the Turtlehead Sea Snake, a marine elapid with a blunt specialised head and reduced dentition associated with eating fish eggs. Identification should combine documented pattern, scalation, body form and locality because related Japanese reptiles may be very similar. Claims here are limited to the opened species accounts (Wikipedia, general species account; Reptile Database). Field identification should therefore remain cautious wherever photographs or diagnostic measurements are unavailable.

It inhabits shallow coastal waters of the north-western Pacific in East Asia and feeds exclusively on coral-reef fish eggs, making its feeding ecology unusually specialised. Information absent from those species-level sources is omitted rather than inferred from relatives. Japanese occurrence follows the site's catalogue and the opened distribution accounts (Wikipedia, general species account; Reptile Database). This conservative treatment keeps unresolved parts of its natural history clearly visible to readers.