Dec 21, 2015 03:40 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Believed to be extinct and not seen in more than a decade, the short-nosed sea snake was recently spotted in Western Australia and detailed in a new study.

Published in the journal Biological Conservation, the study came to be when a Western Australia Parks and Wildlife officer captured a photo of two snakes in the water around the Western Australian Ningaloo Reef, according to The Washington Post.

"This discovery is really exciting, we get another chance to protect these two endemic Western Australian sea snake species," study lead author Blanche D'Anastasi, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cooke University, said in a press release. "But in order to succeed in protecting them, we will need to monitor populations as well as undertake research into understanding their biology and the threats they face."

The sea snake is considered critically endangered in Australia, but had been absent for 15 years before being spotted. Regardless of the discovery, the outlook for the snake is bleak.

"Many of the snakes in this study were collected from prawn trawl by-catch surveys, indicating that these species are vulnerable to trawling," study co-author Vimoksalehi Lukoschek, of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said in the release. "But the disappearance of sea snakes from Ashmore Reef, could not be attributed to trawling and remains unexplained.

"Clearly we need to identify the key threats to their survival in order to implement effective conservation strategies if we are going to protect these newly discovered coastal populations."

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