Sea ice is a complex material that exhibits various mechanical behaviours depending on its degree of fragmentation. When sufficiently dense, it behaves as a cohesive, damageable solid that is reasonably well represented by continuum visco-elasto-brittle models. In contrast, where it becomes highly fractured and loose – such as within shear bands – it behaves as a frictional, decohesive granular media, a regime that is challenging to describe within a purely continuum framework. To better capture the transition between the two regimes in a continuum visco-elasto-brittle framework, we introduce additional physical ingredients: a damage-dependence of the Poisson’s ratio, a damage-dependence of the cohesion and a friction criterion. We present results of a simple biaxial compression test in which each of these ingredients are included or not and demonstrate the strong interaction between their effect, highlighting the necessity of introducing them simultaneously to accurately reproduce the brittle to granular transition within sea ice.