[Kabar-Irian] News: Sept 23-27 2006

[Admin-Editors Kabar-Irian]

Sept 23-27 2006
KABAR IRIAN NEWS

TOPICS

* Papuan refugees were hand-picked
* Experts debunk cannibal claims
* Journalists face difficulties in Papua, even with work permits
* Suharto's Legacy Rules and Divides
* Papuan student shot in a brawl
* Drilling has recommenced at the Idenburg property in West Papua
* RI now past denial stage with AIDS
* Rare giant turtles roam north to Point Reyes
---

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20470462-2702,00.html

Papuan refugees were hand-picked
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jayapura, Papua
September 25, 2006
THE plot finally coalesced after years in and out of filthy Indonesian
jail cells: equip a small outrigger for the long trip

from Papua to Australia, fill it with people selected expressly for their
likelihood of winning asylum and wait for the

political fallout.

Expedition leader Herman Wanggai - now living in Melbourne after being
granted a temporary protection visa in March - spent

more than two years travelling to far-flung reaches of Indonesian Papua
recruiting the best people he could find for the

project.

His own chances of gaining political protection once he hit Australian
shores were excellent: he had done two stretches

inside for opposing Indonesian rule in his homeland, and his uncle, Thomas
Wanggai, had declared Papua independent in 1988,

raising the controversial Morning Star flag and then dying in a Jakarta
jail for his troubles.

Several family members would also be good to go on the risky journey
across the Pacific and into the Torres Strait, since

they had in various ways supported the banned independence movement, but
it was the others, drawn from Wanggai's extensive

student network, who needed careful vetting.

The key criteria, Wanggai decided with lawyer Edison Waromi, was that they
had parents involved in some way in the original

independence struggle, after Indonesia subsumed Papua in 1969, long after
gaining its own independence from The Netherlands.

"That way we could prove the potential for intimidation," said Waromi,
whom Indonesia has regularly arrested and jailed for

sedition. "I know about asylum law, I know what the international
situation is on asking for asylum."

Indonesia's crackdowns on Papuan independence activists have long been
noted for their brutality, and the province remains

largely closed to the outside world. However, in lengthy interviews with
The Australian over recent days in the Papuan

capital, Jayapura, Waromi was expansive about the trip's overriding
political aim.

Waromi left Wanggai to his own devices as far as recruiting, as "he had
excellent connections in the independence movement

and amongst students, and he knew who was pro- and anti-independence. What
I said to him was, 'This is your organisational

task; all we want to know is that the exodus succeeds'."

The participants were to come from as wide an area of the province as
possible, to back the group's pan-Papuan credentials.

Waromi, leader of a loose coalition called the Papuan National Authority,
and Wanggai were close to pulling off a project

designed to propel the latter into the limelight as a genuine Papuan
independence leader, with Waromi hanging on to his

coattails.

"We discussed tactics for the struggle, so that Indonesia would open its
eyes," Waromi said.

The crafty politician in Waromi could guess what the impact on
Australia-Indonesia relations would be when Canberra granted

temporary protection visas to 42 of the 43 in March, although he admitted
the speed and fury with which the friendship split

was beyond his wildest dreams.

"We wanted to show the world a small picture of the terrible human rights
situation across all of Papua," he said. "It was a

tactical move in the struggle, to publicise the situation here."

He certainly got publicity, and in spades. Within days, ambassador Hamzah
Thayeb was recalled, President Susilo Bambang

Yudhoyono made an extraordinary televised attack on Australia's decision
and the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs,

Michael L'Estrange, flew to Jakarta to smooth ruffled feathers.

Waromi refused to be drawn on when the next boatload would be setting off
from Papua's treacherous southern coast, although

that was likely to be more due to a lack of ideas and genuine surprise at
the success of the last one than because of any

plan now hatching.

The original plan was supposed to be for 200 people to set sail but 43
were all that could be mustered - "conditions and

funding limited the project", Waromi said.

Wanggai's mother, Karubaba, and father, Sadrak, were also a key part of
the plan to bring Papua on to the world stage, with

Herman as its star turn.

They accompanied him from Jayapura, in the province's northeast, on a
circuitous journey west and then east again, to meet up

with the outrigger that would bear its cargo south across the Pacific.

The family travelled overland to the town of Sorong in the west, and from
there split up: Karubaba, a tough woman with a

fierce protective streak, was assigned grandmotherly duties, taking
Herman's one-year-old twin boys, San and Joi, the rest of

the way to Merauke on a ferry.

Herman and his father sailed a small skiff for nine days from Sorong to
Merauke, picking up successful applicants along the

way. Each had paid 5 million rupiah (about $700) to be part of the moment.

Ferdinanda Kumba, Herman's wife, flew from Jayapura to Merauke because she
feared a bout of seasickness. The eventual days at

sea proved easier than expected healthwise, but there were other concerns:
allegations of embezzlement, with claims made to

Papuan police that Kumba had collected money from a circle of people for a
promised trip to Israel and was now swiftly

bearing that cash southwards to Australia.

"If that's true, then I should have been arrested, since I organised the
trip," Waromi scoffed.

In Jayapura, Karubaba and Sadrak Wanggai were visited by police - they
still are - but, in those first days, they stuck firm

to their son's instructions: "Don't tell anyone where I've gone, and deny
you had anything to do with my departure."

"Herman told me, 'I cannot return now, mother'," Karubaba said of the
first contact with her son after that morning on the

beach in January, when she and her husband saw the leaky boat off. "His
parents, we couldn't sleep during that time as well.

What I know is, he said to me, 'Mother, if I return I will die'."

---

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20461337-2703,00.html

Experts debunk cannibal claims
Sian Powell and Stephen Fitzpatrick
September 23, 2006
CLAIMS that cannibalism is practised in Indonesian Papua are the product
of a junk obsession by Australian tabloid television

journalists engaged in a rabid ratings war.

Australian and Indonesian anthropologists have debunked the notion of
cannibalism after crews from the Seven and Nine

networks were led into the Papuan jungle by Paul Raffaele, a Sydney writer
who speaks no Indonesian and who has admitted he

has spent little time in the province.

The networks' desperate search for a scoop ended in farce earlier this
month when a Seven crew led by Today Tonight host

Naomi Robson was deported after claiming they were trying to save a boy
called Wawa from being eaten. It is alleged someone

at Nine tipped off the Indonesian authorities that the Seven journalists
were travelling on tourist visas.

But Raffaele is insistent. In a breathless travel piece titled "Sleeping
with Cannibals" in the September issue of the

Smithsonian magazine, he paints a picture of an isolated and primitive
people who eat their own. The Korowai, he writes, are

the "last cannibal tribe on earth", and they had told him human flesh
tastes like young cassowary.

While Raffaele has written other articles about lost tribes, it seems the
so-called cannibal Korowai in Papua are not so

lost. One anthropologist has pointed out that some of the Korowai featured
in a 60 Minutes program spoke Indonesian, not

their own dialect, wore shorts and carried plastic bags.

Anthropologist Chris Ballard, of the Australian National University, said
Raffaele's assertions about cannibalism were not

borne out by the facts.

There were documented cases in Papua in the 1960s, Dr Ballard said, but he
had heard nothing of an eyewitness account of

cannibalism in the 10 years he had studied the province. "There's this
buffoon wandering around for a few days, without even

any Indonesian, purporting to translate this ritual for our benefit," he
said.

Historian Greg Poulgrain speculated that the obsession with Papuan
cannibalism sprang from the myth that Nelson Rockefeller's

son Michael was killed and eaten in 1961 - a legend Dr Poulgrain debunked
when he interviewed Rockefeller's companion, who

explained how the millionaire's son was lost at sea.

He said he believed the last documented instance of cannibalism in Papua
was in 1955. "There were cannibals there years ago,

for sure," he said. "But not now."

---

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1748108.htm

Journalists face difficulties in Papua, even with work permits

The World Today - Monday, 25 September , 2006  12:35:00
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
ELEANOR HALL: Two weeks ago Australia was bemused by the story of a
Channel Seven crew's misadventure in the Indonesian

province of Papua in search of a story about supposed cannibalism.

The Today Tonight crew was deported for travelling to Papua without permits.

Since then the ABC's Indonesia Correspondent, Geoff Thompson, has
travelled to Papua with one of the rarely issued permits.

But he says that even with official permission to work there as a
journalist, it's almost impossible to do so without being

treated like a criminal by the local police.

Geoff Thompson joins me now from Jakarta.

So, Geoff, how closely does Indonesia monitor journalists in Papua, and
what was your experience on the road there?

GEOFF THOMPSON: Well, we got the official permission. We were sort of
awkwardly given permission to cover a festival that

does not actually take place until October, but we were given permission
to go in the last week. So we go there, we register

at the police station, as requested, we even requested interviews with the
police chief and the governor, et cetera.

But the weird thing is that you're told you can go, you can be in
Jayapura, for instance, the capital, or Timika, but we

travelled for sort of little more than an hour outside of the city, and on
the way back we were pulled off the road by police

intelligence. We were quite angrily interrogated until, for about an hour,
before being let go, and then that went on.

And then when we arrived in Timika, this had flowed on to a message to the
police there, and we barely got off at the

airport, we were tailed to our hotel, we were pulled into a police
station, interrogated and basically detained for about

four hours, and our Indonesian translator was particularly harshly
questioned during that time.

And we were told that seeing we weren't covering this festival, that
wasn't even taking place, we had nothing really to

report.

ELEANOR HALL: So were you able to do your job at all?

GEOFF THOMPSON: Ah, well, we got around, we spoke to people, we attended
something which would best be described as a Papuan

identity sort of ceremony. But really, official human rights people,
official NGOs, people like that. But this footage was

filmed by the police, off a television screen, and sent to the
headquarters to be investigated and treated as if it was

something that was completely not allowed in Papua today.

I mean, working as a journalist there, you can only get the feeling that
it is a police state.

ELEANOR HALL: Geoff, there has been recent debate about the extent of
Indonesia's human rights abuses in Papua. The

International Crisis Group says that they occur, but they fall short of
accusations of genocide.

>From your experience, how easy is it to pin down that down?

GEOFF THOMPSON: Well, all, you know, we were basically not allowed, it
seems, as far as the police in Papua were concerned,

to speak to human rights groups even, let alone actually travel around the
province for any extended period of time, or any

time at all in fact, to actually try and verify these things.

So the simple fact is that no matter what Jakarta may say, no matter what
permission Jakarta may grant you, the police on the

ground in Papua don't want you there and don't want you asking any real
questions.

ELEANOR HALL: Geoff Thompson, our Indonesia Correspondent, thank you.

---

The Australian
Monday, September 25, 2006

Suharto's Legacy Rules and Divides

The remnants of the Indonesian police
state are alive and well in Papua, writes

Stephen Fitzpatrick in Jayapura

COMPUTING science student Johannes Kurisi was shot in the back almost a week
ago during an apparent Papuan gang conflict, but he and the friends
tending to
him in a Jayapura hospital don't expect the assailants to be caught.
"The amber-skins aren't interested in helping us Papuans," declared
18-year-old fellow student Assa Asso outside Kurisi's hospital room,
summing up in a
few words one of the sharp currents of dissatisfaction in Indonesia's
easternmost province.

Although Jakarta's transmigration program encouraging central islanders to
relocate to the nation's outer reaches was ended in 2000, its effects will be
felt in places like Papua for generations.

The scheme was ostensibly about easing population pressure on islands such as
Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, but it had the useful supplementary feature of
spreading the dominant culture to areas where the Jakarta political elite
would
otherwise have had minimal influence.

The faintly self-deprecating joke among Papuan locals is that the migrant
traders carry on their business from comfortable shopfronts, while indigenous
Papuans sell their wares in the gutter.

While the mechanism of power is slowly shifting into indigenous Papuan hands,
with both governors of the region's two provinces, and all regional heads,
now being Papuans rather than Jakarta blow-ins, the poverty and power divide
along ethnic lines remains stark.

The popular perception is there are very few Melanesians with flash cars or
profitable restaurants, and almost no non-Papuans engaged in manual
labour. The
new arrivals even spend their time busily fabricating "traditional" Papuan
handicrafts at Jayapura's art market.

Separatist leader Willie Mandowen, a leading force in the Papuan Presidium -
a legitimate political organisation linked to the underground and armed Free
Papua Organisation - is scathing of the "divide and rule" tactics being waged
by Jakarta, even despite the relatively enlightened presidency of Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono.

Yudhoyono came to power promising peace in the provinces of Aceh and Papua;
he and Vice-President Jusuf Kalla have somehow managed the former but the
latter founders in bureaucracy and the refusal of a police state to relax
its grip.

The recent and probably unconstitutional division of the province into two -
Papua and West Irian Jaya - is believed by many Papuans to be a ploy to keep
them from uniting.

Many argue that recent deadly "tribal clashes" in Timika, where Freeport has
its giant gold and copper mine, were more about competition between military,
police and other business interests over who gets the massive crumbs being
pushed from the edge of the natural resources table, than about traditional
tribal law.

And some, such as Jayapura woman Ani Warikar, point out that you can't go
anywhere without being reported on by the "intel", or secret police.

"They pose as soup sellers, as shoe repairers, motorcycle taxi drivers,
anything," Warikar said. "They do anything to keep us in line."

The Australian had its own taste of Papua's retrograde police state,
following several days of being tailed by distinctly unsubtle detectives -
gold
jewellery, discreet surveillance locations at the very next restaurant
table, and
the like. After being hauled into "intel" headquarters, given a stern lecture
about not reporting on anything political and being ordered to hand over
"everything you have written", we were set free with the parting shot that
"hopefully, we won't meet like this again".

The encounter, while tense, was not without its light moments, such as a
big-noting intel officer demonstrating his prowess at memorising mobile phone
numbers and despite repeatedly getting them wrong, having the
self-confidence to
declare, "that's the kind of skill you need if you want to be in intel".

But the jokes were only on the surface. The Australian received several
follow-up telephone calls from intel over the next few hours - evidently
someone
had thought to write the number down, rather than rely on memory -
including one
pretending to be an offer to meet a jailed political dissident.

The last was clearly a clumsy attempt at a sting that would provide easy
grounds for deportation.

The calls peaked on Saturday evening with the barely veiled threat that
"there is nothing for you to do here in Jayapura; it would be best if you
left
tomorrow". Eight years after the fall of the dictator Suharto, and the
supposed
end of the Indonesian police state, there is one corner of the archipelago
where
its repressive tactics remain alive and well.


---

http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20060923.G08

Papuan student shot in a brawl

National News - September 23, 2006

JAYAPURA, Papua: A Papuan student, identified as Yohanis Kurisi, 23, was
treated at Dian Harapan hospital in Jayapura for a

shotgun wound after being shot in the back in a brawl after drinking
liquor at a nearby stall.

Kurisi was on his way home Tuesday evening with two of his friends after
drinking when he was suddenly mobbed by a group of

youths about 500 meters from his house.

Kurisi later went home to take a dagger and pursued the attackers.
However, he was later shot in the back.

Instead of going to the hospital to get medical treatment, he ran away for
fear of being hunted by the shooter. Kurisi only

went to Abepura Hospital the following day before being transferred to
Dian Harapan Hospital.

Director of the Papuan chapter of the Institute for Policy Research and
Advocacy (Elsham) Aloysius Renwarin expressed concern

over the shooting incident. "How come the shooting was aimed at just one
person? This shooting was an attempt to take

someone's life," he said.

Renwarin further urged the authorities to uncover the perpetrator behind
the shooting. -- JP

---

from: http://www.mineweb.net/co_releases/212503.htm

Avocet Mining PLC - Update
Mineweb - Johannesburg,South Africa
Drilling has recommenced at the Idenburg property in West Papua   where we
are exploring for a high-grade gold resource

through scout  drilling of areas of known ...
Our exploration program at South Sulawesi has produced some
significant trenching results which were announced on 30 August and
we expect further ongoing trenching results to be announced later
this year. Drilling has recommenced at the Idenburg property in West
Papua where we are exploring for a high-grade gold resource through
scout drilling of areas of known gold mineralisation, including the
Sua area, which was drilled last year. We are also in negotiations
over a number of additional prospects in Indonesia.

---


http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20060927.T02&irec=1

RI now past denial stage with AIDS

Duncan Graham, Contributor, Surabaya

You have to watch your language in the lexicon of the deadly disease, AIDS.

Cure" is out, along with "solution", "antidote" and "remedy".

Instead try "treatment" and "therapy". For, as yet there's no vaccine to
prevent the condition and no drug that will return the patient to full
health.

In direct language, AIDS is a death sentence.

Offsetting that bleak diagnosis are medicines that can hamper the progress
of the disease. They're known as antiretrovirals (ARVs).

They come from the laboratories of Western science, require heavy use and
can have some nasty side effects on the skin, joints and stomach. They're
also expensive.

Is there anything else? Traditional therapists think they may have some
helpful suggestions, and they recently shared their ideas at the 8th ASEAN
Congress of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Surabaya.

One of the organizers, acupuncturist Putu Oka Sukanta, said complementary
alternative medicines (CAM) could help the body fight the disease and
soften the downsides of the conventional drugs.

However, they were not a substitute. People living with AIDS should
continue taking their prescribed medication.

It's believed that only in Indonesia are hospital doctors using
conventional medicines along with traditional therapies. These include
acupuncture, acupressure, nutritional supplements, massage, breathing
exercises and meditation.

"CAM tries to balance the yin and yang in the body through an holistic
approach so the body can retain its natural functions," Sukanta said.

"The problem is that AIDS is a political disease. By that I mean it
involves human rights, religion, discrimination and the right to
treatment.

"Part of our job is to empower AIDS patients to they can exercise their
rights and obligations, and help them lead productive and fulfilling lives
in society."

There's no let-up in the warnings and predictions of awful times ahead
unless heavy-duty measures against the disease are taken now. Activists
use the term "epidemic".

At this stage that seems hard to justify as the official numbers of people
suffering are minuscule when measured against the population, and put
alongside an estimated 500,000 deaths annually from tobacco use.

Sukanta said the main hot spots are Papua where the disease has been
spread through heterosexual contact among tribespeople, the big cities
where intravenous drug users operate, and the sex industry where
prostitutes with HIV pass the disease to their clients who then infect
their wives.

Once in the family HIV can get into the children and the wider community.

"There's been a lot of ignorance about AIDS," said Sukanta, who has been
working since 1997 with patients who have the disease. "At first there was
denial that it could occur in a religious country like Indonesia.

"It was seen as God's damnation and a Western affliction. Now things are
changing. Government policy is getting better (see sidebar).

"Some Muslim teachers and women in jilbab (Islamic headscarves) have
become infected, so religious leaders have had to face the facts and widen
their horizons."

Getting an accurate count is impossible in a country where many people
don't consult doctors, while those who do may be misdiagnosed. Postmortems
don't always follow unexplained deaths. But somewhere between 90,000 and
130,000 Indonesians are officially believed to be living with HIV.

Activists say these are just the obvious early shoots above an enormous
underground root structure of undiagnosed sufferers, with an estimate of
four million druggies nationwide. Not all inject, but those who do are
taking terrible risks if they don't use clean needles. Around 50 per cent
of new HIV cases are mainliners.

The worst-case scenario has around 300,000 dying of the disease by 2025.

HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) damages the body's immune system and
lets in AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

You get it only through the transfer of body fluids -- usually by sharing
syringe needles or having unprotected sex with an infected person.

It was first identified in 1981 and since then an estimated 25 million
people have died of AIDS, mostly in Africa.

---

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/26/MNGUGLCOQC1.DTL

Rare giant turtles roam north to Point Reyes

Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Leatherback turtles, like this one photographed outside o... A gigantic
leatherback heads back to sea in June, 2005, a... The Leatherback Turtle.
Chronicle graphic by Gus D'Angelo


Sea turtles the size of sports cars are swimming off the Marin County
coast, chowing down on jellyfish and thrilling boaters lucky enough to
spot them.

Leatherback turtles typically visit the California coast in the fall and
congregate around Monterey Bay. This year, however, the turtles could be
zeroing in on the Marin Coast instead.

The leatherback, an extremely rare reptile that tolerates waters too
chilly for other sea turtles, can grow up to 9 feet long and weigh a ton.
It's unclear why it's showing up so far north.

Scott Benson, a research biologist with the National Marine Fisheries
Service who specializes in leatherbacks, said he hoped to search for
turtles soon in the waters off Marin County. Benson and his crew plan to
put a satellite telemetry tag on at least one of the highly migratory
creatures to track its travels around the Pacific Ocean.

"You usually start hearing of sightings sometime in late summer or early
fall," he said. "Last year, they were off the San Mateo coast, and now
they appear to be north of the Golden Gate. Wherever they go, they're
looking for jellyfish."

At least one large leatherback recently was spotted fairly close to the
Point Reyes Peninsula, gobbling jellyfish the size of dinner plates.

"It was huge," said San Francisco resident Lisa Mullerauh, who spotted the
animal while fishing from a Boston whaler with her brother, John Rauh of
Muir Beach.

"It had maybe a 5- or 6-foot shell," said Mullerauh, who took pictures of
the turtle. "It was so low-key -- just floating there, eating these big,
brown, footwide jellies like they were going out of style. We were only 20
feet from him, and he didn't seem to even notice us."

Leatherbacks are placid and seldom show much alarm at being approached,
and they can be difficult to spot.

"These are cryptic animals," Benson said. "They don't really have a
pronounced profile in the water, and they can be hard to find."

Leatherbacks are found around the globe, but their numbers have dropped
drastically in recent years. The Pacific population is especially at risk,
said Karen Steele, the campaign coordinator for Save the Leatherback, a
Marin County-based group.

"Pacific leatherbacks have decreased by about 95 percent in the past 20
years," Steele said. "There may be as few as 2,300 breeding females left."

The decline of the species is largely due to human collection of their
eggs on their nesting beaches and the killing of adults by drift net and
long-line fisheries, she said.

Benson hesitated to put a figure to the Pacific leatherback population but
acknowledged that the species has dwindled precipitously. In a good year,
he said, perhaps 300 leatherbacks visit coastal waters north of Point
Conception in Southern California.

Benson said there are two stocks of Pacific leatherbacks: one nesting on
beaches in the Indonesian province of Papua and the other at sites in
Costa Rica and Mexico. The turtles that show up in California waters come
from Asia, he said; the Costa Rican and Mexican leatherbacks typically
head to South America.

Benson said researchers have worked with Papua Indonesian villagers during
the last few years to protect the turtles' nesting sites.

"We think we're going to have to make a bigger commitment," he said. "The
villagers need money. They're getting offers from timber companies to log
their land, and that would definitely damage the nesting habitat. It's a
real race between natural resource demand and the turtles."

Some turtle deaths are also linked to trash -- particularly plastic bags,
which the turtles mistake for jellyfish.

Steele said another potential threat to the leatherbacks is the fisheries
service's consideration of a drift gill net fishery for California and
Oregon from mid-August through mid-November. Drift gill nets are large
mesh nets suspended in the water to catch swordfish and other large
predator fish by their gills.

In 2001, the marine fisheries service banned such fishing for those months
after agency staffers determined leatherbacks could be harmed.

Mark Helvey, an assistant regional administrator for the fisheries
service, said any new drift net fishery would be limited in scope. Only
about five boats would be allowed to fish at any one time, he said, and
fishing would stop if two turtles or one whale of any of three species --
short-finned pilot whale, sperm whale or humpback whale -- were killed.

The agency should make a final decision on the proposed fishery by Oct. 2,
Helvey said.

Steele said the drift net ban has been effective in protecting
leatherbacks, and she said it should remain in place.

"There hasn't been a single observed leatherback death attributed to
fishing since the closure went into effect," she said. "With leatherbacks
remaining in such serious jeopardy, this isn't the time to loosen
regulations."
The leatherback turtle

Scientific name: Dermochelys coriacea

Size: Leatherbacks are the largest turtles. They can grow to 9 feet and
weigh more than a ton.

Description: Adults are usually black with a pinkish, white belly and pink
and white spots on the top of their head. Their front flippers are larger
than other sea turtles' and lack claws.

Range: Leatherbacks are found throughout the globe, although the Pacific
populations are found in Asia and along the coastline of North and South
America. They're very migratory animals. They can stay underwater for 30
minutes and dive up to 4,000 feet.

Diet: They favor jellyfish but also feed on sea urchins, squid, algae and
seaweed. Their throats have spines that prevent prey from escaping.

Reproduction: Only an estimated 2,300 reproducing Pacific females remain.
They lay about 100 eggs on sandy, tropical beaches. The nesting period may
last between one and two weeks. Two-inch hatchlings emerge after about two
months.

Threats: Nesting sites are increasingly destroyed by pollution and
development. Longline fishing - which employs 60-mile lines of baited
hooks - and drift gill net fishing also ensnare the turtles. They were
listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1970.

Mini Cooper: 11.9 feet, 2,524 pounds

Leatherback turtle: Up to 9 feet, 2,000 pounds

Key leatherback nesting sites remaining in the Pacific

1 Terrenganu, Malaysia

2 War Mon, Papua, Indonesia

3 Jamursba-Medi, Papua, Indonesia

4 Papua New Guinea

5 Solomon Islands

6 Baja California, Mexico

7 Michoacan, Mexico

8 Guerrero, Mexico

9 Oaxaca, Mexico

10 Las Baulas, Costa Rica

Sources: U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration; U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service; Mongabay; MiniUSA.com - compiled by Johnny Miller,
Chronicle Research Librarian

E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin at sfchronicle.com.