Experience: the Science of Exploring, Perilously

The sun was rising as I landed in Papua, the second-largest island in the world besides Greenland boasting a biodiversity comparable only to the Congo, Borneo and the Amazon.

A long-held dream of mine was viscerally transpiring: to document and promote efforts to conserve wildlife in remote Papua. From the airport, I was lifted off on the maxed-out shocks of another junky motorcycle taxi as we made our way into the port city, Sorong.

After a few days of being patient, I boarded a tiny boat and we pushed off from the polluted waters lining the city’s rocky shore.

Seven hours after sitting on the bow, I leaped off near the shore of Warmung, cool ocean waves up to my chin, carrying my camera gear above my head.

Approaching the shore, a scattered group watched me from the shade of a towering, beached wartime ship covered in algae, which was their home.

From among the locals stepped Maco, Daniel and Lingo, three rangers posted out here with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

These men, their tough appearance betraying their actual size, are posted out here in the largest nesting ground of the leatherback sea turtle in the Pacific and Indian oceans, protecting this critically endangered species and handling relations with locals.

The boat comes twice a month, and besides that brief exchange of information and supplies, they stand on the ground where the forest meets the sand and the sand meets the sea.

We arrived at camp and after setting up my tent and taking a quick shower using the bucket-and-rope method, I joined the men around a fire, on top of which was a closed pot.

“I caught it because I’d heard you were coming,” said Daniel, the longest resident outsider at the camp. “Try some – spicy wild dog.”

With the lid off, it was easy to see the animal’s two jawbones, little diamond-like teeth sticking up through boiled pink flesh, and claws.

I slept a few hours before midnight when the team woke me, and we walked a small distance to where the moon was shining across the Pacific.

As the three of us then sat on the bench singing Christmas carols in April, an enormous female leatherback turtle made her way up the beach, huffing.

We encountered three female turtles that night, running toward blinking flashlight signals to meet them.

The team measured their starry backs. Unique from the shells of all othe species, these ridged shields covered in a living, tough hide caught the moonlight like wet rubber.

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