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Long‐term decline of the western Pacific leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea: a globally important sea turtle population

R. F. Tapilatu,P. Dutton,Manjula Tiwari,T. Wibbels,Hadi V. Ferdinandus,William G. Iwanggin,Barakhiel H. Nugroho

Published 2013 in Ecosphere

ABSTRACT

The leatherbacks nesting at Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua Barat, Indonesia, account for 75% of the total leatherback nesting in the western Pacific and represent the last sizeable nesting population in the entire Pacific. Sporadic nest counts at Jamursba Medi Beach at Bird's Head have indicated a declining trend from the 1980s through 2004, although a relatively high amount of nesting has recently been documented at Wermon Beach, located 30 km east of Jamursba Medi. We used expanded year-round nesting surveys from 2005 to 2011 at these two primary nesting beaches to obtain more robust estimates of the nesting population size and to evaluate long-term nesting trends. We found a 29% decline in nesting at Jamursba Medi and a 52% decline at Wermon from 2005 through 2011. We found that the estimated annual number of nests at Jamursba Medi has declined 78.3% over the past 27 years (5.5% annual rate of decline) from 14,522 in 1984 to 1,596 in 2011. Nesting at Wermon has been monitored since 2002 and has declined ...

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