Tuesday, January 19, 2016. In the oceanic country of Australiahave appeared impressively, two species of snakes that were believed to be extinct for more than fifteen years in the reefs of “Ashmore” and “Hibernia”, in the Timor Sea. These beautiful sea snakes have appeared again on the west coast of Australia; one of them to some 1,700 kilometers away from its last known habitat.
These species of sea snakes are known in science as “Aipysurus foliosquama” Y Aispysurus apraefrontalis; both had been considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); since they had allowed themselves to be seen between the years 1998 and 2002. The great news that the scientists of the James Cook Universityis that they have found his whereabouts since December 2015.
The main author of the study that has published “Biological Conservation”, being a researcher at ARC Center of Excellence for the Study of Reefs australian University Chorale, Blanche D’Anastasi, commented that “This discovery is exciting because we give these Western Australian endemic sea snake species another chance to protect them.” But, in order to achieve this objective, scientists must exhaustively monitor all the populations of snakes found; and thus begin to promote the study of their biology and the threats they may present.
The snakes identified as «Aispysurus apraefrontalis», had been discovered by Blanche, thanks to photographs of two aquatic reptiles, taken by Grant Griffin; who is a wildlife technical expert from the amazing parks of Western Australia. “We were very surprised that these snakes considered extinct were in sight, living in one of the natural icons of the Country; on the reef of «Ningaloo»D’Anastasi said.
But the most interesting, according to this great researcher; is that in the photographs, both snakes were in a courtship system, being a breeding pair for their population.
Scientists have discovered a large population of the sea snake «Aipysurus foliosquama» in abundant seagrass beds in the Bay of Sharkwhich has been declared as Heritage of humanity by unesco in the year 1991 in Western Australia. Blanche said that «We thought that this rare species of snake only inhabited tropical coral reefs, but that is not the case.»
Although, this is great news for the world; The number of specimens of the two species of snakes has been declining in many of the marine parks, and none of the scientists has come up with a logical explanation for this. Vimoksalehi Lukoschek, is part of the research team and expressed that “many snakes captured for the study were collected using trawl nets, so they could be vulnerable to this type of fishing”; but some of the disappearances of these snakes in the «Ashmore» reef, can not be attributed to trawling.