Highly Venomous Sea Snakes Hunt in Huge Group 20 Years of Planet Earth BBC Earth

And anything fleeing from the crates will swim straight into the mouths of the waiting trevally. There's nowhere to hide. And there are snakes here too. Lots of them. These are banded sea crates. They lay their eggs on land, but they hunt here in the water. They're too slow to catch fish in a straight chase, so they seek prey that is hiding in the nooks and crannies of the copper. Their bite is highly venomous and paralyzes their victims. And on this reef the snakes do not hunt alone. Shoals of yellow goatfish and trevally are seeking similar prey, and they attract the snake's attention. As one group of hunters searches the reef, they're joined by the other. At least 30 snakes have now joined the caravan. The big fish scare the prey into cracks, and there the snakes can catch them. And anything fleeing from the crates will swim straight into the mouths of the waiting trevally. There's nowhere to hide. As the raiders scour the reef, more and more snakes join the hunt. This cooperation between snakes and fish, spectacular though it is, has only recently been observed, for it only happens on the most remote reefs in Indonesia. Perhaps such hunting alliances were once a common sight, but today no more than 6% of Indonesia's reefs are in their pristine state.