Extraction of sea turtles and their products has become illegal in most countries. In many, there are conservation programmes to protect egg clutches and nesting females from poaching. International trade of all sea turtle products and sub-products is forbidden under CITES. However, the use of the Leatherback meat, oil or eggs is allowed in some nations, as part of internal traditional customs or rituals. While many international instruments (CMS, CBD, SPAW to name a few) require the protection of sea turtles in international waters, lack of effective monitoring in pelagic fishing operations still causes significant bycatch mortality. As an unprecedented action, the United States government recently closed a very large area in the northern Pacific to the US longline fishery in order to protect leatherbacks from incidental capture.

Because of the decline in the world's populations of the leatherback turtle, full protection of all nesting beaches to eliminate poaching, avoid degradation of critical habitat, and increment hatchling recruitment (through enhancing hatching success and incrementing the number of nesting protection programs) will be necessary. However, as pointed out by Sarti et al. (1996) and Spotila et al. (2000) recovery of this population cannot be achieved by increasing hatchling production alone because of the very high mortalities as fisheries' bycatch. Due to the very drastic observed population declines in last few decades, pelagic and coastal fishing practices that impact leatherbacks must be changed or eliminated urgently to minimize leatherback mortality in these habitats. Further, because the migratory routes of leatherbacks cross territorial waters of many nations or occur in the high seas, international collaboration focused on sea turtle conservation is essential. In regions such as the Caribbean, where populations are shared and the dynamic nature of the nesting habitats provokes shifts in nesting sites, greater collaboration and data sharing will be necessary to derive a better understanding of population sizes and trends.