Friends of Sapelo Beach Sweepers know that a great way to spend your morning on the water is by collecting trash and the occasional treasure at Nanny Goat Beach. One Saturday each month, they take the 8:30 AM ferry to Nanny Goat Beach to join in this cleanup effort. Over the years, in collaboration with Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources and local shrimpers, Friends have played a key role in reducing trash pollution in our waters. You never know what you’re going to find!

If you’re passionate about gardening, join us in nurturing the native plant beds around Sapelo Island’s Long Tabby Complex. Designed by Friends of Sapelo, these gardens have been lovingly maintained over the years. Our volunteers mulch, weed, and add new native plants as needed. After Hurricane Irma devastated much of the gardens in 2018, our Green Thumbs have worked tirelessly to restore the entrance to the complex and more!

There's always something to fix on Sapelo Island—whether it's building picnic tables, hanging gutters, painting, or repairing guardrails. If you can handle a hammer or paintbrush, or don’t mind getting on a ladder, join the Thumb Smashers! Over the years we’ve built picnic tables and bird houses, hung gutters, painted facilities inside and out, and repaired guardrails around the island.

Do you love hiking and spending time outdoors? The Trailblazers help maintain a path that runs from the beach road to Nanny Goat Beach. This trail is in constant need of maintenance. Every two months, the team heads to the island to clear weeds, pick up fallen branches, and keep the trail walkable. Who knows—you might even spot an alligator or two along the way!

Yes, you can be a scientist for a day! Friends of Sapelo often participate in important research and environmental monitoring projects, including beach slope monitoring and fish population surveys.

Did you know the Georgia Coast is a home or stopping point for over 300,000 shorebirds every year? You can become a volunteer steward that educates beach goers about the incredible habitats that shorebirds from across the hemisphere depend on. 

Pop quiz: what’s a nurdle? They might sound cute, but these lentil-sized plastic bits used in manufacturing are shaping up to be a big problem in our oceans, where they absorb pollutants before being snapped up by marine animals and seabirds. Friends of Sapelo volunteers comb Nanny Goat Beach along the high tide line looking for nurdles and reporting their data to a global initiative, started by the Mission-Arnansas National Estuarine Research Reserve in Texas. To learn more about nurdles, and to see a map that shows where nurdles have been found, visit nurdlepatrol.org.