OLIVE RIDLEY

About: 

• Scientific Name: Lepidochelys olivacea. 
  
  
• Common name: Olive Ridley, Pacific Ridley. 
  
  
• Features: 
  • They are the smallest of all sea turtles found in the world. They gets its name from its olive coloured carapace, which is heart-shaped and rounded. 
    
    
  • Males and females grow to the same size; however, females have a slightly more rounded carapace as compared to the male. 
    
    
  • They are carnivores, and feed mainly on jellyfish, shrimp, snails, crabs, molluscs and a variety of fish and their eggs. 
    
    
  
  
  
• Habitat: They inhabit warm waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. These turtles spend their entire lives in the ocean, and migrate thousands of kilometres between feeding and mating grounds in the course of a year. 
  
  
• IUCN Red List Status: In spite of the Olive Ridley being the most abundant sea turtle, their numbers have been declining over the past few years, and the species is recognized as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red list. 
  
  

Arribada: 

• These turtles, along with their cousin the Kemps ridley turtle, are best known for their unique mass nesting called Arribada. i.e. thousands of females come together on the same beach to lay eggs. 
  
  
• Females return to the very same beach from where they first hatched, to lay their eggs. During this phenomenal nesting, up to 600,000 and more females emerge from the waters, over a period of five to seven days, to lay eggs. 
  
  
• They lay their eggs in conical nests about one and a half feet deep which they laboriously dig with their hind flippers. 
  
  
• The coast of Orissa in India is the largest mass nesting site for the Olive-ridley, followed by the coasts of Mexico and Costa Rica.