Although the Gulfcoast diving in Southwest FL is not generally on par with the Eastcoast and FL Keys, there are a couple of options. July 4th found me in Venice FL, "the shark tooth capitol of the world".

I dove a site just South of the main "old town" area, named for the street which dead-ends into the sand; Alhambra. I was fortunate enough to connect with a local diver via Scubaboard. Ben was a pleasure to dive with and was very knowledgeable on the local shark tooth scene.

This is a super easy dive; the main area for collecting lies 50 yds off the beach in 13-18' of warm water. Using an Al 80, we did an 86 minute dive and I still surfaced with 1400psi.

The bottom is soft sand with a few 6" rock ledges. Marine life is a little sparse, a few stray fish, lots of big sand-dollars. The viz was 8-10'

The sharks teeth, of which there must be zillions of them, are in fossil bed deposits offshore. Although I envisioned fanning the sand like some treasure hunter looking for pieces of eight, that actually wasn't what blac86 recommended and I never found any teeth that way. It was better to simply slowly kick near the bottom looking closely for the outline of a tooth.

Most of the ones I located were simply lying there in the sand.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWJePi9gvCr/

J.Reeb
Dark-thirty Diver
818-635-4408 (text)

• Re: Shark Tooth Dive Trip: Venice Florida July 4th 2017 Kathy K 14:06:00 07/07/17 (0)