Olive Ridley Turtle ( Lepidochelys olivacea ) 



Status Report on the Olive Ridley Turtle (Henri A. 

 Reichart) 



Introduction 



In all likelihood, the rarest sea turtle inhabiting the 

 western Atlantic Ocean is the olive ridley ( Lepidochelys 

 olivacea) . Data on this species in this region are equally rare. 

 There are only two major, original publications on western 

 Atlantic olive ridleys: Pritchard (1969c) , and the classic work 

 by J. Schulz (1975) on sea turtles nesting in Surinam. Both are 

 centered on the Guianas* population. Accurate data on nesting 

 olive ridley females are known only for Surinam, a country which 

 is now in its 20th consecutive year of uninterrupted beach data 

 collection of all species nesting there. This record is second 

 only to that of Tortuguero beach in Costa Rica, which is 

 essentially a two species program, while that of Surinam involves 

 20 years of data keeping on four species. 



Distribution 



Historical ; 



Not until the second half of the 20th century did nesting of 

 olive ridleys in the western Atlantic become known. Up until 

 that time, they were apparently sometimes confused with 

 loggerheads, or the occasional sighting was considered to be that 

 of an errant visitor from the eastern Atlantic olive ridley 

 populations off the coast of west Africa. Therefore, even 

 relatively recent historical distribution of the species in the 

 western Atlantic region is unknown. 



P. Pritchard, in his Ph.D. dissertation (1969c), proposes 

 four interesting hypotheses as to the origin of the western 

 Atlantic olive ridleys. These have been summarized in the olive 

 ridley synopsis to be published by WATS II (Reichart, in prep.). 



(2) Nesting. 



The distribution of nesting beaches in the central western 

 Atlantic is limited to the Guianas. An impeccable source refers 

 to some nesting records for Trinidad (Fig. 1, Table 1), but the 

 actual data on this have not yet appeared in the literature. 

 Reference to olive ridley nesting in other central western 

 Atlantic areas, such as Venezuela, are not known from original, 

 published data, and should be dismissed. 



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