Shark's teeth anyone?

Dive Buddy Dee called me up last week and for the first time in a long time, she did not have to keep her young grandson over the weekend. It just so happened, when she called, M2 was in my cube visiting, so we decided to help Dee make the best of her weekend and we put together a quick dive trip for the three of us. Dee has an RV so lodging was no issue. All we had to do was figure out where we wanted to go. We had all discussed wanting to go to Cooper River in South Carolina and dive for megladon shark's teeth in the past, so M2 and I did a Mapquest from our town to Goose Creek, SC. Only 4 hours away!! Let's go shark tooth diving!!!

I called up a charter that was recommended to me by a person I met on DiveBuddy.com and spoke to the captain, Capt. Phil. He sounded like a a "good 'ol boy" and we got along good, so I asked him to be our charter for the Saturday we were coming. (www.backwaterdiversions.com)

Saturday came and the RV showed up at my house around 4:15 am. We got all the gear loaded and off we went. I plugged in "Gabby", my Garmin GPS, and she said we would arrive at the boat landing around 7:46 am. Awesome. After stopping for gas a couple times, we were getting close and Gabby said we would be arriving at 8:06. I had 7:30 on my watch, but we still had 80 miles to go. Something wasn't right. M2 grabbed Gabby and looked in her settings. She had been set on Central time and not eastern. He set it right and, beep, 9:06 was our arrival time. Crap. I got on the phone to Capt Phil and told him I screwed up our traveling time and we would be an hour late. He said it was no problem because we were the only people on his boat that day. Whew.. Thank goodness.

We got to the boat landing at 9:10, loaded our gear on the boat and parked the RV. Then we noticed the sign at the dock. Hmm.. This could be interesting. We get on the boat and head out to our first dive site. We get to the site and the first thing we see is about a 4-5 foot gator swimming just off the shore about 40 feet away from the boat. Kinda cool, but we've never jumped in water knowing there were gators in the immediate vicinity before. Capt Phil then gave us our briefing. He told us what we should, where we should be looking, what we were looking for and his only rule: Come to the surface when we had at least 500 psi left in the tank. Why? In case a gator is near you, you can go back to the bottom and stay until he leaves. Nice.

Dive Buddy Dee and I drop down together and we start searching. I finding nothing and only about 5 minutes into my dive, my dive light goes out. I can't see enough with the ambient light around, so I surface to get my spare. While I'm up there, M2 is asking for more details because he's not having any luck either. Capt Phil gives us a bit more and we head down again. This time, I go to an area that is more like the search area should be and I start me searching. Searching involves finding an area that look promising, waving your free hand side to side to blow the sand off the area and sift through the rocks you uncovered hoping to find teeth. Pot luck, shot in the dark, needle in a haystack? You bet your bippy it is. But, luckily, when we all surfaced, we had all found some teeth and/or artifacts. I thought I found a really old bottle until I surfaced and we noticed it was the very familiar shape of a Yoo-Hoo bottle. This dive had a bit of current, but not much. Just enough to move the silt out of the way when you stirred it up, but not enough to carry you way. Viz was about 8-10 feet max. I came up with 520 psi and had logged a whopping 110 minutes on that tank. Of course, the depth was only 17 feet.

After we all surface, we headed to site two where we would do our other two dives for the day. Dive two consisted of no current and visibility that ranged from 6 feet to zero when I kicked up silt searching. I brought up more pieces on this dive than any of the three. I had a depth of 21 feet, came up with 1100 psi and logged 83 minutes. Dive three had a ripping current at the end of it. The current got so bad, the boat had to keep cranking up because it was dragging the anchor. When I heard him crank up to get closer to me, I knew the other two had surfaced, so I went ahead and called my dive early. I had a depth 19 feet, 1300 psi left and logged 61 minutes on dive 3.

When it was all said and done we all had a good number of pieces that ranged from the actual megladon teeth we went for, Great White teeth, Mako teeth, Sand Tiger Shark teeth, petrified wood, whale bone, pottery, quartz, unknown materials and a couple of "Indian Sex Rocks." We asked Capt Phil what an Indian Sex Rock was and he said: "Just a F***ing rock." We only saw two gators all day. That small one at our first dive site and another about 10-12 feet long that was cruisng the banks when we were headed back to the dock. It was an awesome day!!! Capt Phil was a gracious host and we learned a lot about shark tooth diving. We will be going back and doing this again!!

After we unloaded at the dock, we took the RV to a campground and set up camp for the night. That's when I realized I can't make a campfire, but I can cook some good Brats after M2 gets the fire going. We all crash around 10:00 and get up the next morning around 7:15. M2 and I tear everything down outside and I start the coffee on the stove. The smell of coffee wakes Dee up and after we have our coffee and get everything ready, we're on the road again before 10:00 am. We get back to my house around 2:30 Sunday afternoon. It was an awesome trip!! Great trip, great dives, great times, great friends.