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[IncompetentFortressMaker]

A caravan from a modded civ (exotic animal tamers and at peace with wildlife, just like elves) somehow managed to bring the following:

For anyone unable to see the image, the caravan brought:
1 female tame sea serpent (like, how did they get her out of the water?)
1 female tame giant eagle
1 female tame alpaca
1 tame sow
1 tame billy goat
1 female tame giant tiger
1 female tame giant masked lovebird
Rather sad that sea serpents are aquatic only... and that they probably cost, what, 1000+ units of wealth? Anyway, quite remarkable to see such a caravan show up one spring.
EDIT:
Now they brought all this...

For those unable to see the image:
1 female tame albatross
1 female tame giant fly
1 male tame giant moth
1 female tame saltwater crocodile
1 female tame dog
1 male tame horse
1 tame yak cow
1 female tame sea serpent!
1 female tame giant eagle
1 female tame alpaca
1 tame sow
1 tame billy goat
1 female tame giant tiger
1 female tame giant masked lovebird

[Magistrum]

Which mod are you using? Did you mod them in yourself?

[Urist McVoyager]

Dig a pool and feed it from the river. Put the cage next to the pool and open it. The serpent will hopefully climb into the water. Get a breeding pair for Science. Not that it'll be easy to do anything with them, but that's the Science part. Dig a secondary shallow pool with a drain in it and a floodgate separating them. When you want to cage babies for sale or full grown adults for butchering, open the gates and let the pool partially fill. Not enough to force swimming but enough to let the serpents through. You can mess with intermediary pools if you want, to limit the risk of catching and air drowning too many.

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

Yes, modded them in myself. Mod in question is unreleased (and I'm not sure it will ever be). Currently goes by working name "JARM", short for "Just Another Random Mod" because I can't think of any name for it. Maybe I should call it "Implausible Biology" or something.
Note for "Urist McVoyager": Maybe pitting them in a pond would work, via using a pit zone over a water tile? Or would aquatic animals be impossible to move on land, even if dragged by a dwarf?
EDIT:
About that water pool strategy... not so much, unless I want to do something with the caverns. All surface water is frozen year-round, even the brook. My fort Gishdistavuz, "Frozenmines", is in a freezing taiga.

[Staalo]

Cage release mechanism should also work underwater. Build a pool, build the serpent cage on the bottom of it, hook the cage to a lever. Then fill the pool with water and pull the lever.

There you go, one live giant sea serpent happily swimming in her own aquarium. You can't recover the cage, though.

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

Managed it, though I did use a floodgate to stop anything nasty from getting in. Currently, the lever is only linked to the floodgate (since the serpent has been released). Miracles of dwarven engineering... how else does a lever operate through a wall?

[Fleeting Frames]

Could also have pitted them through a bridge; that way you'd have kept the cage. But the real keys to sea serpent breeding as livestock is chains to separate the young from old.

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

Well, you know, I don't have a breeding pair right now.

[Reign on your Parade]

Can't breed aquatic egg-layers right now regardless. Underwater nestboxes don't work.

[Crabs]

Can't breed aquatic egg-layers right now regardless. Underwater nestboxes don't work.

That sucks. A moat filled with poisonous sea serpents would be Bondvillain tier defense. OP has to buy as many as he can and fill a moat with them.

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

The moat would freeze! That fort was in a freezing taiga. Also, due to an unfortunate incident, that save somehow became unplayable (though I had retired the fort in question, Gishdistavuz or Frozenmines, before the incident). Specifically, my computer had seemingly shut itself down after a game of badminton. I started it back up, only to be greeted by a screen saying my computer ran into a problem and had to restart (don't remember the exact wording) after logging in. I started up DF and tried to enter the save (more than one time), only for DF to hit "Loading tracking information..."/"Loading world information...", stop responding for a minute or two, and then suddenly terminate. I have no idea as to why. I figured the save must have been corrupted and thus deleted it, since it seemed to be unplayable anyway. The gamelog/errorlog didn't show anything odd (aside from the standard ***STARTING NEW GAME*** outputted when loading DF).

[Dunamisdeos]

Well then you need a retractable bridge in the throne room that dumps prisoners into the flooded sea serpent pit.

[Magistrum]

Actually, you need to run a canal of magma underneath the moat to keep the water above from freezing. You know it's a good dwarf fortress project because it's way too complicated for the marginal benefit it could theoretically grant, and somehow less effective than just leaving it as is.

[Fleeting Frames]

That's one of the ideas that seem like they should work, but don't. Outside water tiles periodically refreeze even above magma, though melt again quickly as long as the magma isn't completely level (this kills the sea serpent).

(I wonder if a burning artifact earring in a bin would be more effective, being 1/200th the size of a lignite bar.)

[HmH]

Hold on, I thought it was only the outside tiles that froze. That was the main principle behind ice traps back in DF2012, if I remember correctly.
Don't roof- or even bridge-covered tiles remain liquid in the newer versions? No matter how many tiles above them the roof is?

UPD: Never mind, I'm misremembering. Outside stays outside no matter the covering.
Which wouldn't stop you from digging an underground moat for your sea serpents...