The pacific leatherback sea turtle (dermochelys coriacea) is a species most at-risk for extinction

The indonesian archipelago is critical habitat for the surviving population, but their numbers have dramatically declined in part due to EGG harvesting and direct take from nesting beaches and foraging grounds. In 2017, conservation efforts were put in place on a newly found leatherback nesting site on buru island, where EGG poaching and direct take of nesting females was rampant. By 2019, significant results in the protection of mothers and nests made buru island the first substantial nesting population discovered outside of papua, indonesia in the last decade. This project continues this conservation work in buru island. The objectives are to maintain monitoring, continue collection of genetic samples, deploy satellite tags to improve understanding of movement patterns that will feed into the boundaries of a proposed marine protected area, which will allow a transfer of conservation RE