A beach cleanup at Folly Beach turned into a sea turtle rescue, after volunteers collecting litter spotted a young Kemp’s ridley struggling in the water.

For the past five years, Folly Beach, South Carolina, has held Toby’s Earth Month Island-Wide Spring Litter Sweep, an annual community beach cleanup. During this year’s event on April 12, volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of trash in under two hours.

“An important part of being a member of the community is to come down and help out,” volunteer Emerson Reece told local news station WCSC. “So we came down this weekend. I made like a two-and-a-half-hour drive today to make sure I was down here on time.”

Volunteer and Waves 4 Women executive director Sarah Butler said the cleanup reflected why many people showed up.

“What we do is born of our love for the ocean and our love for the environment,” Butler said. “And so, if we’re not good stewards of it, then it’s not going to be here for us to be part of. So, this impacts everybody.”

During the sweep, volunteers saw something in distress in the water. It was a juvenile Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, a species that Dave Miller of Folly Beach Turtle Watch said is the smallest and most endangered of the world’s seven sea turtle species.

“This was Folly Beach’s first stranding of our 2026 season,” Miller said in a statement. “This turtle is a large juvenile Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. There are seven species of sea turtles in the world. The Kemp’s ridley is the smallest and most endangered of the seven.”

Miller said Kemp’s ridley sea turtles do not often nest in South Carolina.

“Kemp’s ridley sea turtles rarely nest in South Carolina,” he explained. “They primarily nest on beaches in the Gulf of Mexico. They nest in large groups together and are the only sea turtle that nest during the day.”

According to Miller, an angler off the Folly Beach fishing pier had hooked the turtle in the mouth. A rescue team used a drop net to raise the animal, and the hook came loose on its own.

Miller said people who hook a sea turtle should not try to remove the hook themselves.

“When a sea turtle is hooked by a fisherman, it’s important that the fisherman not try to remove the hook from the turtle’s mouth,” Miller advised. “The line should be cut, leaving several feet still attached. This makes it easier for the veterinarian to locate the swallowed hook … If a hook had been swallowed, the turtle would have been transported to the Sea Turtle Care Center.”

The Folly Beach rescue came about a week after another Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was found stranded on Mustang Island, Texas, on April 4.

That turtle, a female, was spotted by lifeguard and marine biology student Nevaeh Vela, who realized the animal was having trouble breathing. Specialists from the Amos Rehabilitation Keep at the University of Texas at Austin later found a fishing hook fragment lodged in the turtle’s trachea after picking her up.

The team removed the fragment with an endoscopy.

“The turtle is being monitored closely, and [she] is on antibiotics, pain medication, and anti-inflammatories,” ARK staff supervisor Andrew Orgill told Chron.

Orgill said cases like that have become common for him and his colleagues, and pointed to discarded fishing gear as one of the problems facing sea turtles.

“Discarded gear is sometimes referred to as ‘ghost gear,’” Orgill said.

He also described the harm that gear can cause.

“Other impacts include deep lacerations, flipper amputations, inability to swim properly, ingestion of baits, hooks, and line.”

After the Folly Beach rescue, Turtle Watch volunteer Vanessa Oltman also urged people to take litter seriously. Speaking through the voice of local mascot Toby the Turtle, she tied the message back to the children at the cleanup and the wildlife the event is meant to protect.

“We only have one planet, and this is it,” Oltman said. “So, without the animals that we have on Earth, the wild and marine life, we will not exist either, because we are all supposed to coexist together. So, it’s very important that we teach the children from small all the way up how important it is to pick up litter.”

📸 Credit: LIVE 5 NEWS