Butterflies of excitement kicked in as I finally left Sorong in a longboat accompanied by my guide, boatman and cook. After almost 3 years' of organising, here I was now, just 15 hours away from where I hoped to experience one of my life-long dreams - to see, and swim with a leatherback turtle ...

Every year, these enormous, prehistoric-looking turtles visit the beaches of the Birds' Head peninsular off the North coast of West Papua in Indonesia to they lay their eggs. This spectacularly wild, frontier location revealed itself as we chugged along. But as the signs of civilisation disappeared, I was alarmed to see this rugged rainforest coastline punctuated by numerous timber logging settlements loading their barges with enormous logs. 

I was greeted at the beach by a large group of excited, scantily-clad young children. It was obvious they weren't used to seeing white skin! After setting up camp, I arranged to meet the head man of the village to get permission to use the beach, and look for the turtles every night for the next couple of weeks. After much drinking and smoking various local concoctions around a camp fire, my promise to pay for 3 villagers to assist my search of the 22km of beach for turtles every night sealed it. I had all clear to find for my quarry ... 

A series of intense thunderstorms prevented me from any successful encounters for the first few days but I was lucky on the sixth day. At around midnight, excited yelps and frantic torchlights from across the beach signaled the discovery of our first leatherback turtle. My heart thumped painfully hard as I approached and I heard her breathing before I saw her. Then my torch found her massive bulk heaving up the beach. She must have weighed it at more than 350kgs with her leathery carapace approx 6ft long - she was huge! Not wanting to disturb her too much, I carefully filmed every possible angle of the whole nesting process. I was in complete awe of the finesse with which she scooped the sand from the egg chamber with her rear flippers. I marvelled at evolution, and the precision required to ensure the eggs are laid at exactly the right depth. For at first appearing to be such a primitive and clumsy beast, every scoop she made must have contained no more than a teaspoon full of sand! Then after depositing here leathery clutch, her 2 meter long front flippers showered me with sand as she covered the nest.

With my camera housing open and ready for my camera, my BCD and tank waiting for me at the water's edge, I continued to film her as she lumbered down the beach. Occasionally she'd pause to catch a few full breaths and I filmed the salty tears streaming down her face. If there's one thing I will never forget from this incredible encounter - it's the strong, acrid smell of her warm breath as she bellowed for air. It was ... the smell of thousands years of jellyfish!!!

As she paused one last time a few feet from the water, into the u/w housing went my camera and I was dive-ready within moments. I swam out 10-15 metres, sank to the bottom in her direct line of fire, turned my video lights on, switched the camera to record and waited, and waited. After numerous chats with experienced cameramen, and many hours surfing the internet, I knew this was one of the first, if not the first time this had ever been filmed. There I was sitting on the murky bottom on my own, in the middle of nowhere and many hrs from civilsation at 3am about to have an encounter with a 350kg female leatherback turtle! Thoughts of the tiger sharks rumoured to be in the area flashed through my mind ...

Then out of the gloom, her prehistoric, timeless form appeared, she was devoid of any emotion. She surface just in front of me for one last breath of air and trundled over me like a steam rain. So ungainly and clumsy on land, this was a different animal! Her enormous front flippers gave enormous power and despite my frantic turbo fins, she faded out of my view finder within a matter of seconds. I was stunned! I surfaced, spat out my reg and shouted out loud for joy. I had just witnessed first hand one of the few last remaining leatherbacks returning to the sea. Now that was a religious experience!

I had a final afternoon in Sorong at the end of my trip so my guide took me back to the Wildlife Dept. to say my goodbyes to the staff and a BIG thank you to the director for all his help. As we left, I saw a wizened old gentlemen dressed in suit sitting outside his office. My guide went on to explain that he was the headman of the neighboring stretch of forest to the leatherback beach. It turned out that he was there to conclude the negotiations with a Chinese-Malaysian timber company to sign off the logging rights to his village's ancestral land. Gutted by this parting reality, the tranquility of that wildest of places was clearly about to change. What chances do the last of our terrestrial coinhabitants really have I wondered?