Kavwokmali is the primeval crocodile of Iatmul cosmogony. In the beginning nothing existed but water, and the crocodile paddled endlessly with his front and hind legs, keeping the mud churned up and suspended so that earth and water remained undivided. This unbroken labour held the cosmos in an unordered state until the culture hero Kevembuangga speared him, after which the stilled mud sank and settled into dry land. Sources differ over the relation between this churning crocodile and the wider Sepik image of a world-bearing crocodile whose movements cause earthquakes; Bateson records Kavwokmali specifically as the being whose death separates land from water.