Olive ridley turtle
Topic: Biodiversity and its Conservation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The olive ridley is a small sea turtle. It is famous for arribada, a Spanish word for "arrival", when thousands of females come ashore together to lay eggs on the same beach. It is listed as Vulnerable by IUCN. A major threat is trawler fishing nets, which trap and drown turtles at sea.
Example
Odisha has mass nesting sites at Gahirmatha, Rushikulya and the mouth of the Devi river. During the nesting season, the Indian Coast Guard patrols these waters under Operation Olivia to keep trawlers away from the turtles.
Don't confuse with
- Leatherback turtle: a much larger sea turtle. In India it is linked with the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, not with mass nesting on the Odisha coast.
Related concepts
- Wetland
- Ramsar Convention
- Ramsar sites of India
- Montreux Record
- Blue carbon
- Coral bleaching
- Great Barrier Reef
- Dugong