About us
Sea turtles have existed on Earth since 120 million years ago and grace the waters of all the world’s oceans except the Arctic. Unfortunately, sea turtles face many threats to their survival. Six out of the remaining seven species of sea turtles that exist today are classified as threatened with extinction by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. One species, the flatback, is not listed due to insufficient data.
The Olive Ridley Project is on a mission to protect sea turtles and their habitats through rescue and rehabilitation of injured sea turtles, scientific research, and education and community outreach.
The Olive Ridley Project, UK Registered Charity No 1165905, was founded in 2013 in response to the large amounts of entangled Olive ridley sea turtles found in the Maldives, where this turtle species is particularly rare. Most encounters with this vulnerable sea turtle here are under stressful conditions; entangled in ghost nets, or floating injured on the surface. Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been lost, abandoned, or discarded at sea. Every year ghost nets injure and kill millions of marine animals. The turtles rescued by the Olive Ridley Project are only a fraction of those who endure this agony in the open sea: It is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly how many go unnoticed.
In February 2017 we opened our Marine Turtle Rescue Centre in partnership with Coco Collection in Baa Atoll, Maldives. The first fully-equipped marine turtle rescue centre in Maldives has laboratory and surgical facilities as well as a full-time resident turtle veterinarian and can accommodate up to eight turtle patients at the time.
We rely on a community of volunteers and citizen scientists, environmentalists and Marine Biologists to collect data for sea turtle research, report and remove ghost nets, and rescue injured turtles. Injured sea turtles are transported to our Rescue Centre for treatment and rehabilitation by our veterinary team.
ORP is a small charity. We depend on donations to fund the running of our Marine Turtle Rescue Centre, our educational programs, and our sea turtle population and ghost net research. Your kind donation will also help us untangle more turtles from ghost gear, remove more ghost gear from the ocean, and support initiatives to reuse end-of-life fishing gear.
We are grateful for any donation we receive – big or small.
On behalf of all sea turtles that will benefit from your generosity, we thank you in advance for your support!
