South Carolina Sea Turtle Released After Surgery To Remove Fishing Line (Watch)

CHARLESTON, SC — A sea turtle that swallowed more than 4 feet of fishing line and had to undergo surgery to remove it was released into the Atlantic Ocean off South Carolina's coast.

The turtle, Peach, was freed at Folly Beach on Monday after recovering from the surgery, the South Carolina Aquarium said in a news release Monday.

Peach, a 55-pound female Kemp's ridley turtle, was found last summer in Charleston Harbor. The Department of Natural Resources found the turtle with fishing line around her head, neck and left front flipper. It also ran down her mouth and into her intestines.

Peach was tagged with a satellite transmitter so researchers could study how Kemp's ridley turtles move over the winter. (For more information on the turtle and other Charleston stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

The animal is listed on the federal register as endangered. The turtle is one of the smallest of the sea turtles. Adults grow to about 2 feet in length and can weigh up to about 100 pounds, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on its website.

The Kemp's ridley is the most endangered of the sea turtles. Its numbers precipitously declined after 1947, when over 40,000 nesting females were estimated in a single arribada. The nesting population produced a low of 702 nests in 1985; however, since the mid-1980s, the number of nests laid in a season has been increasing primarily due to nest protection efforts and implementation of regulations requiring the use of turtle excluder devices in commercial fishing trawls. In 2011, a total of 20,570 nests were documented in Mexico, 81 percent of these nests were documented along the 18.6 miles of coastline patrolled at Rancho Nuevo. In addition, in the United States, 199 nests were recorded in 2011, primarily in Texas.

Photo credit: South Carolina Aquarium