Arribadas, Sea Turtles Synchronised Nesting Disturbed With Tourists

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An arribada is a unique nesting phenomenon common to both the Olive ridley and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. The Olive ridley is endemic to the Pacific coasts of Mexico, Central America, and India. It is known to be a nocturnal nester. The Kemp’s ridley is endemic to the Gulf of Mexico. It ranges from Galveston, Texas to Tampico, Mexico. Kemp’s ridley turtles display unique diurnal arribadas.
As they evolved, ridley sea turtles adopted a unique nesting behavior that increases their offspring’s chance of survival. They deposit more eggs in the sand than predators can consume. No other species of marine turtle uses this type of nesting behavior. Both species of ridley practice the phenomenon known as “predator swamping”. “Predator swamping” can also be observed as hatchlings emerge from their nests in large numbers. This behavior overwhelms the predators that wait to eat them on the beach. Predator swamping increases the odds of offspring surviving to adulthood and introduce that parent’s genetic information into the gene pool.
On unprotected beaches it is estimated that, for some species of marine turtles, only one out of one thousand or one in ten thousand hatchlings survive to adulthood. With current conservation efforts in place on nesting beaches, the current mathematical model now suggests that the survival rate is one out of three hundred.