Shark Toothing: diving off Venice Florida
Posted: June 22nd, 2014, 11:36 pm
Took a trip with the family and a friend to Venice Florida to do a two tank shark toothing dive. Venice is well known as a shark toothing destination and before kids my wife & I loved doing beach dives looking for sharks teeth. We always did well in shark tooth numbers but never found the elusive large Meg tooth (Extinct Giant White Shark (Carcharocles megalodon).
Boat Dive: We did two boat dives with the dive company Florida West SCUBA in 28 - 30 feet of water in the area called the “Boneyard”. The U/W conditions were pleasant with 82 ˚F water but with a poor 6 - 8 foot murky visibility - enough viz to look for teeth however.
Nice morning
Poor U/W viz
We only found a couple of teeth in our two dives (82 minutes each bottom time) which was a bit disappointing but I did manage to find my largest Meg tooth yet! So in light of that it was a successful couple of dives. There were to my knowledge two other good sized meg teeth picked up with a lot of bone material too (11 divers). Florida West SCUBA did a great job and was a fine company to dive with.
Beach Dive: In years past my wife & I always did well diving for shark teeth off the beach in 18 feet of water so my buddy and I did a beach dive off the Venice Service Park beach. We geared up & finned out 300 yards on the surface then dropped down to 18 feet of water. Viz was worse than off the dive boat but continuing to fin U/W west we hit an inshore reef in 22 feet, the viz improved to 6 -8 feet, and we started finding the characteristic black fossilized material in which you find sharks teeth. The pickings here were good but just like everywhere else there was a thin layer of sediment on everything.
95% of the teeth pictured below were from the beach dive.
Combination of Sand shark, Bull, Lemon, one Meg tooth (largest) and stingray mouth plates and barbs.
Brian
Boat Dive: We did two boat dives with the dive company Florida West SCUBA in 28 - 30 feet of water in the area called the “Boneyard”. The U/W conditions were pleasant with 82 ˚F water but with a poor 6 - 8 foot murky visibility - enough viz to look for teeth however.
Nice morning
Poor U/W viz
We only found a couple of teeth in our two dives (82 minutes each bottom time) which was a bit disappointing but I did manage to find my largest Meg tooth yet! So in light of that it was a successful couple of dives. There were to my knowledge two other good sized meg teeth picked up with a lot of bone material too (11 divers). Florida West SCUBA did a great job and was a fine company to dive with.
Beach Dive: In years past my wife & I always did well diving for shark teeth off the beach in 18 feet of water so my buddy and I did a beach dive off the Venice Service Park beach. We geared up & finned out 300 yards on the surface then dropped down to 18 feet of water. Viz was worse than off the dive boat but continuing to fin U/W west we hit an inshore reef in 22 feet, the viz improved to 6 -8 feet, and we started finding the characteristic black fossilized material in which you find sharks teeth. The pickings here were good but just like everywhere else there was a thin layer of sediment on everything.
95% of the teeth pictured below were from the beach dive.
Combination of Sand shark, Bull, Lemon, one Meg tooth (largest) and stingray mouth plates and barbs.
Brian