Mangrove saltmarsh snake seen for first time in S. Florida
Broward County has a newly discovered resident — a saltwater snake that likes to hide out in the mangroves.
Mangrove saltmarsh snakes, which are nonvenomous, live only in coastal areas, but they’re so good at hiding and blending in with their habitat that recorded sightings are rare in Florida.
But two researchers with Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach spotted two of them in West Lake Park near the Intracoastal Waterway in Hollywood in late February. Those are the first recorded sightings in Broward County, according to state records.
About 550 of the snakes have been documented in Florida, including some in Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys, according to records from the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Tom Chesnes, a Palm Beach Atlantic biology professor, and his research partner, Josh Holbrook, have been hoping to find the snakes closer to home. The two have been spending the past few years exploring marshes where these snakes are known to exist.
Chesnes and Holbrook were the first to identify the species in St. Lucie County in 2014 and Martin County about a year ago. The two have been searching for the snakes in Palm Beach County, but so far, they haven’t found them.
Their Broward County sightings happened about 9 p.m. Feb. 27, when the two were trudging through the marsh next to the mangroves at West Lake Park. They found two of the nocturnal snakes, each about 2 feet long. One was a pure mangrove saltmarsh and the other was a hybrid that was part Florida water snake.
“I was pleasantly surprised. I was fairly sure mangrove saltwater snakes were there just because of the habitat, but at the same time, they are very good at hiding,” Holbrook said.
“These type of snakes by their nature are cryptic,” Chesnes said. “We often talk to people who spend their lives in the mangroves fishing and they’ve never come across these snakes. We know they’re pretty common, but people just weren’t aware of their existence.”
There was one drawback to the discovery: One of the snakes bit Holbrook on the hand.
“There was a lot of blood. We were working in an area where there had been news reports of an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria,” Chesnes said.
But the two say they’ve bitten bitten by snakes so many times, it’s become routine.