Sea snake image taken from diving school's post about Malaysia, not South Korea

"Recent situation in the sea near Yeosu," read the Korean-language claim shared on Facebook on October 8, referring to a coastal city in the southern part of South Korea.

The image shows a diver swimming away from a large, striped sea snake. 

The post also included the headline of a news report to a November 2023 report from local news organisation KBC News about the spotting of a black-banded sea krait near the waters of Yeosu (archived link).

Banded sea kraits are large sea-dwelling snakes known to primarily inhabit tropical to temperate latitudes in the Eastern Indian and Pacific Oceans (archived link).

The increasing frequency of the creatures being spotted in South Korean waters shows the impact of global warming on the East Asian country, KBC reported. 

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Screenshot of the false claim shared on Facebook. Captured October 18, 2024

Identical claims were shared on Facebook here, here and here. 

However, the photo shows a sea snake that a Chinese diving school said it spotted in Malaysia, not South Korea. 

Diving spot

A reverse image search on Google found the picture corresponds to a frame in a video posted to the Chinese video-sharing website Xiaohongshu on July 29 (archived link). 

The video was titled "Semporna Sipadan Diving | Encountering Sea Snakes". It was posted by Cool Diving Semporna Campus, a "diving school in Semporna," according to its Chinese-language description.

Sipadan Island is a popular diving area near the Malaysian resort town of Semporna (archived link). 

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared in the false Facebook posts, flipped horizontally (left) and the original video posted to Xiaohongshu (right):

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Screenshot comparison between the image shared in the false Facebook posts (left) and the original video posted to Xiaohongshu (right)

The video's Xiaohongshu account tracks its IP location in the Chinese province of Sichuan.

AFP was able to locate the organisation's official website, which says it is based in Sichuan province's Chengdu city (archived link).

The organisation says it has five diving training bases, including Semporna, Malaysia (archived link). 

South Korea sightings

Around 19 banded sea kraits have been captured in South Korean waters in the last four years, though research indicates they originate from more temperate parts of the Pacific Ocean near Taiwan and Okinawa, according to the official blog of South Korea's Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (archived link).

South Korea's southern sea is believed to be the "northern limit of the habitat" of these sea snakes, which are "a valuable species in demonstrating habitat changes in sea creatures due to climate change," reads the ministry's profile on the krait. 

Kim Il-hoon, an expert from South Korea's National Marine Biodiversity Institute, told AFP that the snake in the photo "is indeed a banded sea krait" and that such snakes have been spotted in waters near Yeosu. 

"However, due to the lower temperatures in South Korean waters, sea snakes rarely appear and so far there have been only two sightings of banded sea kraits in waters near Yeosu," he said on October 24. 

Kim went on to say the tendency for sea creatures to migrate northward "has been increasing due to rising ocean temperatures owing to climate change".