Shark Tooth Hunting
Written By: Bridgette Theriault
What do you do when you finally get a day without the notorious southwest Florida storms? I’m talking about a day with clear blue skies, low winds, calm oceans, and a group of friends itching for an adventure! For my friends and I, its a day of SCUBA diving off Venice Beach. Yep that’s right! Just a regular, public beach. However, there is more going on here than just sandcastles and tanning. It is not uncommon to see people scanning the shoreline with sifters, or divers with tanks on their backs and fins on their feet awkwardly waddling toward the water. Venice Beach is commonly known as the “Shark Tooth Capital of the World”. There are over 500 different species of sharks and Florida has one of the highest concentrations in the world. Along the shorelines of Venice, you can find millions of fossilized shark teeth belonging to all different species of sharks, whale jawbones, and even Dugong rib fragments. But perhaps the most sought-after fossil, is a tooth of the massive, extinct, megalodon.
Roughly 10 million years ago, high sea levels kept Florida completely submerged. The waters surrounding it was teeming with sharks, including the megalodon. As time went on, water levels began to recede, and land started emerging. The prehistoric sharks died and their skeletons disintegrated. However, their fossilized teeth were left behind. In its lifetime, a single shark can produce as many as 25,000 teeth, so over millions of years, a significant amount of shark teeth fossils have built up. Venice Beach sits along a sloping shelf, meaning there is no sharp drop off. This enables shark teeth and fossils to gradually be uncovered and driven into shallow water with every storm and wave that passes.
My friends and I came up with an array of shark teeth of all shapes and sizes, though none compared to the three-inch megalodon tooth that a nearby diver found. Needless to say, this was the first trip of many, and we will certainly be back. We already have our next trip planned for September and this time we are hoping to have enough time at the end of the day to do our part and collect some trash along the beach (the afternoon rain drove us to leave earlier than anticipated). If you or someone you know enjoys sharks, fossils, scuba diving, or just relaxing on a beach, I highly recommend making the drive up to Venice.
Reference:
https://www.visitvenicefl.org/shark-tooth-capital/
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