That has been the dilemma for a resort on Fiji's Toberua Island, which attracts more discerning travellers and yellow-lipped sea kraits (Laticauda colubrine), big, colourfully banded snakes.

And writing in Conservation Biology, Sohan Shetty of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Richard Shine of the University of Sydney, have discovered the snakes are particularly passionate about home and can get back there very quickly.

Sea kraits, related to cobras, pack a deadly nerve toxin. Males are up to a metre (yard) in length, females longer. They must return to land to reproduce, slough their skin and digest their food, usually every 10 days or so.

The krait bite is said to be painless but as the neurotoxin travels through the bloodstream to the brain stiffness, muscle aches and spasm of the jaw, pain in the bitten limb follow. While the toxin is particularly deadly, their fangs are short and for immobilising prey such as moray and conger eels, not for defence.

Shetty and Shine studied the sea kraits off Toberua and Mabualau islands, 5.3 kilometres (three miles) apart, off the coast of Fiji's main Viti Levu island.

Toberua Resort wanted to be snake free, but did not want to kill them, so called in the experts to consider eviction.

The two experts went out every night and captured the snakes by hand, marking them. In the end they worked on 328 Toberua snakes and 674 from Mabualau.

For the researchers the work produced a quick result: the snakes were passionately home loving.

"Not only did these animals remain philopatric to their home island if undisturbed, but they also returned rapidly to their own island if displaced."

The implications go beyond Fiji. In the Philippines sea kraits have been severely depleted for their flesh and for the US leather industry that prizes their skin. Filipinos wanted to bring in outside kraits to restore populations.

The snake is not threatened particularly, although Shetty and Shine say their fidelity to home must have created some genetic diversity in each population, and as each group is wiped out, that diversity disappears.

They noted that in Fiji there was no commercial harvesting of sea krait but they said there were other threats to local populations, including the spread of the mongoose, introduced by British colonialists.

For resort owner Vern Heydon the news is a mixed blessing.

The toxin business does not concern them as practically nobody has ever been bitten by one other than fishermen feeling around in nets. However, the kraits do have a personal odour problem that Heydon compares to that of a badly maintained public toilet.

Most of his guests are from Australia and New Zealand, the latter snake free. Australians, he says, are wary of the snakes because snakes in Australia tend to be aggressive, while New Zealanders are intrigued.

"Our view on sea snakes as they affect us is simple, we don't mind them in fact they are of considerable interest to people after initial adjustment. Education is the key."

The scientists suggested one way to move the snakes would be to move their eggs but Heydon says finding the eggs is always a problem.

"We have no interest in killing or removing the snakes. Snake proofing the rooms seems the best idea," he said.

The previous owners were looking at removing them, and only because of some tourist reactions, he said. "We don't have a problem with them.

"We only have problems with people thinking that the beach is writhing with them."

They are noticed only in November when they mate but Heydon says for some people even one snake is too many.

"They can be handled quite safely and are very docile."

And they love home.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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