Environment

The original spark for the project, Dudgeon recalled, emerged from her 2015 IUCN Red List assessment of the species. A conversation with Erdmann about his dive observations revealed a surprising alignment: while aquariums had excess eggs, the wild had none. The potential for rewilding using surplus aquarium-bred pups became clear. That conversation evolved into what is now the StAR Project, a global collaboration backed by aquariums and scientists from around the world.

Unlike many sharks that bear live young, leopard sharks lay egg cases about the size of a human palm—an important biological quirk that made transoceanic transport feasible. Working with 12 aquariums, the team developed a shipping protocol that keeps eggs viable for up to 40 hours, allowing them to be moved from tanks in the U.S. to hatcheries in Raja Ampat.

There, two custom-built facilities—operated in partnership with local eco-resorts—nurture the embryos. Once hatched, the pups are raised on a diet of wild-caught snails and clams, not aquarium feed, to better prepare them for life on the reef. At around 50 centimeters, the young sharks are transferred to sea pens for a “fattening” phase, eventually reaching over a meter in length before their release.

As of August 2025, the project has shipped 132 eggs, hatched 99 pups, and released 43. The goal is to release 50 to 75 sharks per year—an ambitious pace that, according to IUCN modeling, could reestablish a viable population within a decade. Natural recovery, by contrast, could take 200 years, if it occurs at all.