Myrtle Beach 8/8 - 8/16

While many believe that Myrtle Beach is just a place for finding pretty shells, my family and I have been going to MB each August for our annual vacation since 1998, and hunting the beach for shark’s teeth is the main part of each of my days. The past 2 or 3 years, the hunting has gotten notably worse, though, so we were happy to learn that another beach replenishment was scheduled for September 2008. According to a friend of mine who stays there, this time---- instead of dredging within sight of the shore as the Army Corps of Engineers did last time, around 10 years ago---- they went completely out of sight over the horizon. (He also noted that they could hardly stand to walk the beach for several days after the replenishment was completed due to the smell of the dead sea life carried in on the barges and shot up onto the beach) According to this guy, they filled-in out to the 3^rd or 4^th lightpole on the pier, but that the winter storms had washed much of the material back out.

Anyway, we went this year with high hopes that the hunting would be improved, and that the potential for a nice Meg or two was reasonable due to the above. While we weren’t rewarded with anything too large in the shark’s tooth department, we definitely had some nice finds (and did hear about a couple of nice Megs being found while we were there). The largest thing I saw found was about a 1 ½ inch upper anterior Mako, badly dinged-up (story about the guy below). I believe that the fact they had not had any storms in over 3 weeks prior to our arriving limited what was being unveiled by the tides, as they were just gently rolling straight in on the beach, and not reaching far even at high-tide. (Wish I could have been there as Bill rolled up the coast!)

The guy who found the Mako tooth was hunting in the surf. He and his wife (and usually both his teenage kids) were out there every day, and were using homemade strainers to catch the teeth. I was finding some stuff that I considered to be pretty neat and out of the ordinary (turtle heads, shark vert), so I finally walked up and asked him, “Are you finding anything besides shark’s teeth?” He said that they were all he looked for. I thought he might not realize how much other stuff was available to be found, so I showed him a few of the other fossils I had in my pockets. He barely gave them a passing glance, and said he wasn’t interested in anything else. (Fair enough!) I told him that I’d seen him pick up the big tooth, and that it was a nice find. At that point, he pulled out his bottle and showed me that tooth, along with the others he had found that morning. I identified the Mako for him, along with a pretty little GW and a couple of decent Sand Tigers. He said, “Ah, we don’t care what kind they are. We just like finding them.” (Fair enough!) He went on to tell me that they hunted down there every year, and that they counted their finds every day, and for every stay, and that they classified them only by size before sticking them in storage jars. (Amazing how the bug bites people in different ways!)

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy the pics. In the photo showing most of our finds for this trip: Column left shows what the locals refer to as turtle heads (not really), and this was the first year that I found these in decent condition. [It's actually the 60 million year old fossilized snail (or rock-like cast formed by silt that replaced the snail) from an Ark shell (Cucullaea, a mollusk).  The casts have the look of turtle’s heads because of a spiny ridge on the rounded top-side, an indent that looks like the place where a spine might attach, and a line that looks like where the mouth would close]; a possible posterior meg (close up shown, but tip is broken off so I am not certain of this) + crow shark; some of our larger and/or more interesting teeth, including the nice brownish blade next to the dime, the row of GW’s, 3 decent mackerels, our nicer Sand Tigers, a couple of fairly large requiem teeth, drum teeth, shark vert, an unknown tooth, a croc tooth fragment, and a fish tooth (prolly a ‘cuda); our pile of other teeth; and a few fossilized crab claws.

Column center shows 4 items that I am not absolutely certain of (close ups provided), but which I think may be our best finds of the trip: a horse’s tooth (which we found lying out right by itself on the beach during extreme low tide!); a sperm whale tooth; and 2 pieces of what appear to be fossilized ivory.

Column right shows a pile of various fossilized bone fragments, including a piece of a vert; our fish noses and skull elements; palates; turtle shell, including a nice piece of carapace; stingray barbs; and the omnipresent batoid teeth.

Not like a trip to Aurora, but not a bad haul, and I enjoyed every minute of the searching!