Found a small eel/snake at Sunset Beach, NC - can anyone help identify him?

I found this little guy last week at Sunset Beach, NC about 0.5 miles from the Little River Inlet. He was only about 8"-10" long. The tide was coming in and he was right at the edge of the surf where there was still a little bit of water standing but not enough to cover his body. I asked the few other people out there if they knew anything about the snake, whether he belonged in the ocean or not and nobody had seen one like him before, but the general consensus was that he might have been carried in and wasn't able to get back out. I picked him up to carry out into the water and he was a little lethargic, and when released into the water seemed to swim away from the coast. I tried to keep an eye out for him to see if he got pushed back to shore but didn't see him again.

I've done several searches of eels and snakes native to the Carolinas but haven't been able to figure out what he was. I'm sorry if this isn't the appropriate /r/ for this question but I'd really like to know what he was and thought you guys would be most likely to know.