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[00:00.20] Researchers with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, catch a leatherback sea turtle off the coast of California.

[00:07.89] The tens of millions of years old species is in serious decline, says ecologist Scott Benson.

[00:15.33] Estimates are that the population now is about 1400 adult females remaining.

[00:25.95] That's down from literally tens of thousands several decades, a few decades ago.

[00:30.73] Benson co-authored a new study that says the foraging area used by the leatherback sea turtle saw a population drop of about 80 percent in the past 30 years.

[00:40.83] He says this is amazing given the species adaptability. The leatherback turtle is an ancient mariner.

[00:46.94] They've been around for almost as long as 80 million years in their present form, date back to the time of the dinosaurs.

[00:55.18] It's not a poorly adapted species. They've been through all kinds of things, meteor strikes, climate changes, you name it.

[01:02.87] He says the smaller numbers make the species more vulnerable to outside factors, like international fishing and egg harvesting.

[01:12.44] Benson's team puts transmitters on turtles so their fishing fleets can avoid them.

[01:15.10] He says his team is doing what it can to boost the rapidly dwindling numbers.

[01:19.61] We're down to the remnants right now so any little thing now could potentially disrupt it. So we have just very little time to turn around.

[01:27.05] All seven species of the leatherback are in trouble, but the new study focuses on the western pacific variety,

[01:33.42] which migrates more than 11,000 kilometers from Indonesia and the Solomon Islands to the US west coast to feast on jellyfish.