Indonesia
Education and Outreach
Public talks, school visits with virtual reality, citizen science with dive centers, and hands-on training that build understanding and care for Indonesia's marine megafauna.
Conservation only works when the people closest to the ocean are part of it. Our outreach reaches across communities: from the dive operators and tourists who encounter manta rays and sea turtles every day, to the government officials and policymakers who shape how Indonesia’s seas are managed, to the schoolchildren who will grow up to be their stewards.
For guests and the dive industry, we work with a network of more than 40 partner dive centers across Bali, Komodo, West Nusa Tenggara, and the Derawan Islands. Since our work began in Nusa Penida in 2012, these partners have been integral to our research — contributing photographs that form the identification catalogs at the heart of our science. They also carry our findings to the water’s edge, briefing guests on responsible wildlife interaction and sharing the story of what the data they help collect is actually revealing.
We engage government counterparts and institutional stakeholders throughout our research areas, providing science-based briefings that translate our findings into recommendations for marine protected area management, fisheries policy, and national conservation planning. Building these relationships means that when our research points to something that needs to change, there are people at the table ready to act on it.
In schools, we bring the ocean into the classroom, and sometimes the classroom underwater. Our team visits local and international schools with virtual reality headsets that let children swim with manta rays without leaving their desks, and sparks conversations about biodiversity, marine ecosystems, and what it means to share a coastline with species that travel thousands of kilometers. We also host students and early-career researchers as interns, giving the next generation of Indonesian marine scientists hands-on experience in the field.
Objectives
- Make Indonesia’s marine megafauna research accessible to everyone, translating science into stories that inform, inspire, and move people to act.
- Bring the ocean into the classroom through immersive school programs, including virtual reality experiences.
- Deepen our citizen science network with dive centers and tour operators, so that everyday dives generate the data that underpins long-term conservation.
- Promote and embed responsible wildlife interaction: training divers, guides, and operators in codes of conduct that keep encounters with manta rays and turtles sustainable.
- Build the next generation of Indonesian marine scientists by hosting students, interns, and early-career researchers in real fieldwork.
What we've done
- Gave public talks across Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Penida, Bali, Labuan Bajo, and East Kalimantan, and on liveaboards.
- Introduced virtual reality ocean experiences into classrooms in the Derawan Islands, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Penida.
- Visited both local and international schools from Bali to Labuan Bajo.
- Expanded our sea turtle citizen science to Karangasem in East Bali, where 14 dive centers and more than 100 people took part in workshops in 2026.
- Ran a full-day Internet of Turtles photo-identification workshop with Gili Shark Conservation on Gili Air.
- Hosted students from the National University of Singapore for hands-on photo-identification workshops.
- Delivered pre-dive and pre-snorkel briefings on manta ray and turtle codes of conduct with partner dive centers.
What's next
- Continue school visits with virtual reality, in Bali and beyond.
- Host workshops with tourism operators in West Nusa Tenggara as the Lesser Sunda Seascape Tracking Network expands.
Support education and outreach in Indonesia
Your gift funds school visits, public talks, and the citizen science workshops that bring divers, students, and communities into marine megafauna conservation.
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Our education and outreach work in Indonesia
Public talks
The communities around our key sites live alongside some of Indonesia’s most remarkable marine life, yet the science behind what they are seeing rarely makes it into those conversations. Our public talks bring the research to dive centers, community venues, and tourism audiences in the places where our work happens, covering the species people encounter most: manta rays, sea turtles, sharks, and mola. They also correct assumptions that even experienced divers carry — the ocean sunfish in these waters is not Mola mola, as most guides describe it, but a distinct species, Mola alexandrini, something our team confirmed through years of identification work here. We give talks in both English and Bahasa Indonesia, so everyone hears the same story.
Schools and virtual reality
Many of the children who grow up along Indonesia’s coastlines have never seen the animals that draw visitors from around the world to their doorstep. Our school visits change that. Using virtual reality headsets, students dive alongside manta rays and sea turtles for the first time — not on a screen, but wrapped around them. We bring these sessions to local schools across our key sites. The response from children has been wonderful, with drawings, stories, and origami ocean animals left behind after the headsets come off.
Citizen science with dive centers
Long-term datasets, the kind that reveal whether a population is recovering, declining, or shifting, require more eyes than any research team can put in the water. Since our program began, divers’ photographs have been the foundation of our identification work: every image submitted of a manta ray or sea turtle adds to a catalog that now spans years and thousands of individuals, allowing us to track the same animals across seasons, sites, and decades. We work with dive centers across our key sites to keep that contribution growing. Reef manta ray photographs go to MantaMatcher.org (opens in a new tab); turtle photographs to the Internet of Turtles (opens in a new tab).
Training the next generation
Our program is built around developing local scientists, training research assistants in field methods, mentoring them through the work, and supporting their growth into independent researchers who go on to pursue careers and international postgraduate degrees of their own. Beyond our core team, we host volunteers and interns, giving them hands-on experience in marine conservation fieldwork. For many, it is their first opportunity to work in conservation on-site rather than in a classroom.
Janis Argeswara
Calvin Muliawan
Ariq Trisarjono
Indonesia Manta Ray Project
Indonesia Sea Turtle Project
The Lesser Sunda Seascape Tracking Network