local Indians up until the late 1960s. Studies on eastern 

 Pacific olive ridleys have suggested to some researchers that the 

 olive ridleys have a 20-year life span. Indeed the major decline 

 in the Surinam population 20 years after the olive ridley egg 

 harvest was closed to the Indians in 1967 is coincidental. The 

 Indians had been harvesting 90% of the eggs apparently for some 

 time, but when they realized that the harvest would be closed, 

 they collected almost 100% of the eggs for the few years before 

 the closure. 



Data on mortality of other olive ridley populations in the 

 western Atlantic are nonexistent. 



Management Stratecfies 



Major methods to implement management strategies to conserve 

 olive ridleys consist of: 



(1) Modification of shrimp gear. 



(2) Protection of nesting beaches. 



(3) Hatcheries and headstart procedures. 



(4) Legislative regulations. 



(5) Public education. 



Details and references on these subjects can be found in the 

 WATS II olive ridley synopsis (Reichart, in prep.). 



Conclusions 



At the outset of this paper it was stated that perhaps the 

 olive ridley was stated to be probably the rarest sea turtle in 

 the western Atlantic. This statement should have been received 

 with considerable concern by the sea turtle conservation 

 community, but it has hardly caused a stir because most of the 

 emphasis is placed on the Kemp's ridley. 



This lack of enthusiasm is, no doubt, due to the fact that 

 many turtle workers consider the olive ridley the most abundant 

 sea turtle in the world. One only has to look at the numbers 

 being legally and illegally harvested in the eastern Pacific. 

 This annual take is probably several orders of magnitude greater 

 than the entire olive ridley population in the western Atlantic. 



In spite of the ostensibly large numbers of olive ridleys 

 around the globe, this apathy toward the plight of the olive 

 ridley in the western Atlantic should be considered unacceptable. 



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