---
title: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea)
scientific_name: Lepidochelys olivacea
common_name: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle
taxon: Sea turtles
conservation_status: VU - Vulnerable
published: 2024-11-02T17:33:04.660Z
updated: 2026-08-15T14:51:32.973Z
tags: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle, Lepidochelys olivacea, Sea turtles, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/reptiles/sea-turtles/olive-ridley-sea-turtle
---

# Olive Ridley Sea Turtle (*Lepidochelys olivacea*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sea turtles (*Chelonioidea*)
- **Size:** up to 76 cm
- **Weight:** up to 50 kg
- **Depth:** 1-200 m
- **Max age:** 50 years
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Open water and coastal shallows; nests on sandy beaches
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Temperature-dependent sex
- **CITES:** Appendix I
- **Conservation status:** VU - Vulnerable

## How to recognise it

- small olive-gray turtle with an almost circular shell
- six or more pairs of scutes along each side, more than any other sea turtle here
- relatively small head
- shell length up to 76 cm

The smallest sea turtle in this sea, and the one responsible for the strangest thing sea turtles do.

Olive ridleys nest in an arribada - a mass arrival. Instead of coming ashore alone on a quiet night, tens of thousands of females land on a single beach over a few days, so many that later arrivals dig up the nests of earlier ones. On the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and India a single arribada can put half a million turtles on a few kilometers of sand.

The arithmetic behind it is brutal and effective. Predators on the beach - crabs, birds, dogs, people - can only take so many eggs and hatchlings in a few nights, so swamping them in one burst gets far more young to the water than the same number of nests spread across a season would. Almost every hatchling that survives owes it to the ones that did not.

Elsewhere, including here, they nest alone and are simply an uncommon open-water turtle, olive-gray and round. Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, CITES Appendix I, and drowned in fishing nets in numbers that dwarf everything else that kills them.

## Also known as

- **English:** olive ridely, Olive Ridley Turtle, Pacific ridley turtle
- **Arabic:** الزيتونية ريدلي سلحفاة, سلحفاة ردلي الزيتونية, لجأة ردلي الزيتونية
- **Hebrew:** צב ים זיתני
- **French:** Ridley du Pacifique, Tortue de Ridley, Tortue olivâtre (La)
- **Italian:** tartaruga bastarda olivacea
- **German:** Gewöhnliche Bastardschildkröte, Bastardschildkröte, Oliv-Bastardschildkröte
- **Spanish:** Tortuga-marina escamosa-del Pacífico, Tortuga Carpintera, Tortuga Golfina
- **Turkish:** Zeytin Yeşili Deniz Kaplumbağası, zeytin renkli kaplumbaga
- **Portuguese:** Falsa-Careta, Tartaruga-Comum, Tartaruga-Oliva
- **Dutch:** Warana
- **Swedish:** sydlig bastardsköldpadda
- **Polish:** Żółw oliwkowy
- **Czech:** kareta zelenavá
- **Japanese:** ヒメウミガメ
- **Chinese:** 太平洋丽龟, 欖蠵龜, 麗龜
- **Russian:** Оливковая ридлея, Оливковая черепаха
- **AF:** Olyfkleurige Ridley-seeskilpad
- **DA:** Olivengrøn Bastardskildpadde
- **FI:** etelänbastardikilpikonna
- **HU:** olajzöld fattyúteknős
- **ID:** Penyu Lekang
- **KO:** 올리브바다거북
- **MLG:** Fano Stakoy
- **MRI:** Honu
- **NO:** Olivenbastardskilpadde
- **TH:** เต่าหญ้าตาแดง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chelonia olivacea* Eschscholtz, 1829

## Range

Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, New Zealand, Republic of Mauritius, Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/reptiles/sea-turtles/olive-ridley-sea-turtle)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*