The Olive Ridley Turtle

The Olive Ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) is one of the smallest species of sea turtle. It is named for the olive color of its heart-shaped shell. Though listed by the US Endangered Species Act, populations in the Atlantic Ocean continue to dwindle, while the populations found in areas around the Pacific Ocean seem to be on the rise.

The beginning of the year is the season that the Olive Ridley Turtle comes ashore to lay its eggs. Once they hatch, the little hatchlings tend to move towards the light source, which usually should lead them towards the sea. Now with alternate light sources like streetlights, the hatchlings get confused and head into the wrong direction. Our campus, being on the shore, played host to these hatchlings unknowingly. The circumstances were rather unfortunate though, when the students found that crows were preying on these little Olive Ridley turtles. The students and staff scored the campus and shore for more of them, and found five live ones, which were set free into the sea.

The Olive Ridley Turtle, being an endangered species needs a lot of care and support in raising their numbers in the wild. Artlab endures to work along with NGOs like Tree Foundation who conducts turtle walks along the East Coast (Neelangarai fishing village to another fishing village – approximately 13 km) by patrolling the beaches during the nesting season from December onwards. The nesting season extends up to May each year.

Some Facts on Olive Ridley

The Olive Ridley is the smallest species of sea turtle and generally reaches a carapace length of only 27 inches and a weight of just over 100 lbs. They are lightly built with thin, slowly ossifying bones. The carapace is high-domed, generally possesses five costal scutes per side, and the margin is smooth. Olive ridleys are dark olive-green above yellowish below, a color that extends to the underside of the head and limbs as well. The head relatively large, but to a lesser degree than the loggerhead.

The olive ridley is widespread in tropical seas. In the New World, its distribution is disjunct, occurring in the Pacific and in the western Atlantic from about the level of the Surinam south to the Tropic of Capricorn. Why olive ridleys do not enter the Caribbean remains a mystery. The closely-related and highly endangered Kemp’s ridley is restricted to the Gulf of Mexico.

Olive ridleys consume a variety of food including small shrimp, jellyfish, crabs, snails, fish, and in some populations algae is also eaten.

Ridley turtles are unique among marine turtles in their nesting behavior. Rather than arriving more or less individually, as with all other sea turtles, ridleys strand on their nesting beaches in large aggregations over a 3-4 day period. Very pronounced site fidelity occurs in this species. Ridleys can be observed congregating off shore in order to synchronize their nesting activity. Called an “arribada” (arrival) in Spanish, as many as 40,000 turtles may be found on the same small beach at the same time. There are so many turtles crowded together that later arrivals frequently dig up nests and eggs deposited by those that arrived earlier. Nesting is accomplished very quickly, usually within 45 min. This reproductive strategy saturates the predator population such that they cannot possibly consume all of the eggs deposited. Moreover, because ridleys nest only once per year, there is not enough resources to build up predator populations.

Like loggerheads, ridleys are reported to be ill tempered. When caught at sea, ridleys will attempt to bite and thrash violently if placed on their backs in boats. On nesting beaches, these turtles appear only slightly more irritable than other sea turtle species.