I have compiled a list of the very best sites to go hunt for shark teeth, as well as numerous other fossils, while vacationing or visiting the Venice / Sarasota Florida area.  While this list is specifically published for Scuba Divers, snorkelers and beach walkers are more than welcome to use it as well.

VENICE FL FOSSIL HUNTING INFO.

This interactive google map has the featured locations pinned. You can click on each one and get directions from whatever location you are coming from.

1.Alhambra Beach

Venice, FL

Type of diving Shark tooth and fossil hunting in the Gulf of Mexico. This area is a prehistoric river bed and does yield more fossils than the sharks teeth.

Type of diving: Shore dive

What to expect at the dive site: Typical sharks teeth found are from the following: Dusky and Black tip family, Sand Shark (current and prehistoric), Bull Shark, and Lemon Shark. More rare but also found are Mako, Great White, Snaggle Tooth and Megalodon. Other fossils that can be found include dolphin, manatee, and whale bones, stingray stingers and crusher platelets and tail vertebrae, porcupine fish platelets, mammoth and mastodon teeth/tusk/vertebrae, sloth claws, alligator scales, and saber-tooth teeth. Best times for hunting are a few days after a storm when the water has settled down. Depths are 16-18 feet, unless you swim a long way out then you may hit 20.

Where to park: parking is on the street: do not park blocking driveways and park the same direction and traffic flow. Many parking tickets have been issued here to non-believers .

Amenities: Florida West dive shop is about 1 mile north of the site on 41 literally just over the bridge back onto the main land. Sharky’s restaurant is at the base of the pier. Venice Beach’s downtown district is 1/2 mile off with food and shops as well.

Pros and Cons: When the water is clear lots of teeth can be found. When the water is a milky emerald green, there will be no visibility on the bottom and toothing is useless.

2. SERVICE CLUB BEACH

Service club beach can be viewed in the above map for directions

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Amenities: Paved parking, showers, restrooms, picnic tables and a boardwalk to the beach, grills

Site directions: Take a heading of 250 degrees from the boardwalk steps and swim out until you’re even with the pier (about 200 yards) drop down into 15′ of water. Teeth are found in this general area. Swim west about 50 yards and you’ll come to a nice coquina reef full of fish. Past the reef is an area of black sand that always holds fossil teeth, including some nice megs. About 200 yards farther out on the same 250 heading is the culvert artificial reef (about 1 acre of 4 ft culverts laying around and stacked). Lot of fish here but this is also a popular fishing spot so there is always a risk of accidental hooking and entanglement.

Cons: small parking area and lack of good beach access for launching kayaks (the boardwalk ends with several steep steps which would be difficult to haul a kayak up and down with or w/o carts).

SHARKY’S  ON THE PIER

Amenities: large paved parking area, showers, restrooms, good beach access for kayakers.

Site description: there is a large shallow sandbar about 30 yards from the beach, a heading of about 300 degrees for 150 yards will put you in 15-18′ of water in an area of broken shell and black sand. this is where several nice megs have been found. If you continue this heading you’ll come to culvert reef (see service club post for description).

This site is right next to Sharky’s restaurant which is a great post dive/surface interval site for food and refreshment (try the Grouper Wrap).

Special Note: You must stay more than 100 yards from the pier when scuba diving or you’ll get a visit from the Sheriff’s Dept.

Please keep your eye out for part 3.   I will post it in a few days!

shark tooth hunting venice fl chart sharky's

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That’s right, ScubaDivingSarasota.info is proud to announce that we will soon be offering our Unique Scuba training program to those of you living in or Vacationing to the Sarasota area!

We will be offering several different scuba diving programs, catering to the unique scheduling needs of Sarasota area residents, as well as Sarasota Vacationers.

At Unique Scuba, we believe every new diver should posses all the skills they need to be safe, comfortable, and confident while diving the waters of Florida. This is why our program is a little longer than most others AND we limit classes to a maximum of 4 students. For this reason, 90% of our Open Water Diver classes are either private or semi-private, ensuring the proper instructor to student ratio.

If you are looking for the very best in one-on-one scuba instruction, look no further.

It’s your decision.

With the skills developed  by Unique Scuba, you will look and feel comfortable and in control of your diving abilities.

Learn the correct way, in a smaller group, with personalized one-on-one training and feel in control like this.

Correct Diving Examples.

Stay Away From Weekend Crash Courses!

So you are very excited to start your adventure in Scuba Diving?…. We think that is Awesome…!!!  But please do a little research and thinking before taking the plunge..

Would you really like to become certified in only a few days? Rushing through your training at light speed? Without developing true skill and attaining the comfort and confidence level you really deserve?

NO FRIENDS….NO!!   We think you deserve more.

It’s a fact:  Divers that are rushed through training are not as safe, do not have very much fun, and quickly drop out of the adventure lifestyle we call Scuba.  Here at Unique Scuba we believe in smaller classes, more personalized training, and ultimately very safe and happy divers.

Take a weekend crash course with 10 other people developing no true skill and comfort.

Don’t look and feel like this underwater.

Scuba diving can be a life-long adventure involving travel to foreign lands, continuing education and interaction with a bunch of like-minded individuals who share a passion for the undersea world and it’s exploration. Our planet is 85% covered with water and at this point we know relatively little about our great oceans and seas. Only a small fraction of the Earth’s waters have been explored. Diving can be done anywhere there’s water including oceans, seas, lakes, ponds, and rivers. And we can technically include swimming pools since this is where most divers learn to obtain their certification. Learning to scuba dive can become the beginning of a lifelong adventure.

Many people dive both as a fun and recreational activity but there are professional scuba divers too. There are the most famous divers, the Navy SEALS. But most cities and towns have water rescue teams that include divers. So if you love diving, you can always make it a career. There are also professional treasure hunters who scour the ocean’s bottom for shipwrecks laden with gold! Even though they may use high-tech devices like satellite photos and sonar, a diver is always needed to go to the bottom to recover the bounty.

Since diving can be viewed as an extreme sport, it is always recommended that the rules of diving are learned and followed accordingly while engaging in this adventure sport. You can earn your PADI certification and hundreds of locations. And if you arrive at a tropical resort somewhere and suddenly decide you want to learn to dive, most resorts offer lessons right in their pool. You can get certified quickly and then head right out into the ocean to explore the undersea world.

Many people erroneously assume that since you are underwater, the weather doesn’t play a factor on when you can dive. This is not true!

Scuba diving can be limited by weather conditions just like any other activity. Since you usually take a boat to a dive site, winds and rough seas may make this unsafe. And inclement weather can greatly affect the undersea currents making diving unsafe.

Dean Novosat writes about adventure sports and scuba diving at http://www.scubadivercenter.com – Scuba Diving

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dean_Novosat
http://EzineArticles.com/?Enjoy-Scuba-Diving&id=1859813

We are always told we should learn sports when we are young, when our bodies are more resilient to the bruises and bumps which can be afflicted on us when we learn a new sport. This is true to a certain extent.

Take for example, my experience learning wind surfing. I learnt the sport when I was 26. If I were to learn this sport now at age 42, chances are I would not go far and would probably give up after 1 or 2 tries. Learning wind surfing was like battling with all the forces at the same time! We’re talking about trying to balance on choppy waves on a slippery wet board, at the same time maneuvering a sail which weighs more than you in the correct direction that you want to go.In the process, I contributed blood and flesh from cuts on barnacles and bruises from hitting the surf board more than once before falling into the waters.

But there is a huge difference with scuba diving. YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN SCUBA DIVING. I can never say this enough. I learnt scuba diving when I was 38. Now I’m not saying that 38 is a ripe old age but still, the body does feel somewhat less strong and less resilient. Added to that, as we get older, we also seem to have more fears. Perhaps we feel we have more to lose if something should happen to us.

I say middle age and beyond should never be a factor in learning scuba diving BUT you do need to have these:

- an intense love for the sea
- a willingness to learn from someone younger than you
- relatively good health

and last but very important … time and money.

Now I’m assuming that you are thinking of learning scuba diving because you want to make this a sport that you can enjoy every other weekend if time and money permits and not just learning for education’s sake.

An Intense Love For The Sea

To enjoy a scuba diving trip, you will have to love the sea and I mean really really love it with all its wonderful creatures large and small. You will know what I mean on your first ever scuba diving trip after you have cleared your Open Water tests.

It is unlikely that your scuba diving buddies on your first dive trip will be the same classmates in your scuba diving course. Because of time and money constraints, you will find that you may be the only one keen enough to join a scuba diving trip soon after your certification.

More often than not, your dive buddies will be a dive-crazy bunch who will do at least 4 dives a day plus another at night. This means that on a scuba diving trip, most times you will not do anything but dive, talk about the sea creatures and encounters of each dive, before suiting up for the next dive. For someone who only wants to do one dive a day and then go shopping, he/she may be disappointed as many great scuba diving spots have few of these shopping and entertainment facilities.

In case you are already getting stressed just thinking about this, don’t be. Every scuba diving newbie goes through this. Just have an attitude of a newbie, be humble and you will find that the seasoned divers are more than willing to share tips and may even help you to gear up before a dive.

A Willingness To Learn From Someone Younger Than You

Your scuba diving instructor is likely to be someone much younger than you. Some dive instructors have an attitude and are cocky so you may have to live with it for at least 3 weekends before you become certified – 1st weekend for classroom and theory, 2nd weekend for pool sessions and a 3rd weekend for the actual open water tests. Put aside your ego and just bear with it, it’ll be worth it in the end.

Having said that, that’s not to say that there are no good and kind scuba diving instructors around. I was fortunate to receive dive instruction from PC, a very kind and patient man, without whom my dive learning experience would not be as smooth and enjoyable.

Relatively Good Health

It’s not necessary to be in peak fitness before you can take up scuba diving. However, you would need some strength to be able to walk with full scuba diving gear strapped on you. Once you enter the waters with all your gear, you are almost weightless. But it’s the few steps you have to make to get into the boat or to cross the beach into the water that may be a challenge for a person who is not used to carrying heavy loads on them.

Having said that, some scuba diving resorts have fantastic dive staff who can help to overcome this by carrying the tanks and gear to the boat for you to suit up inside the boat. And of course if you are on a live-a-board (live, eat, dive, sleep, on board a boat throughout the dive trip), then this may not be relevant.

Time and Money. This is probably the 2 most deciding factors of whether someone continues to enjoy scuba diving after passing the Open Water tests. Getting certified through a scuba diving course is very fast, just 3 weekends basically. And not too expensive, probably about $300 to $400, including an out-of-the country dive trip for the open water tests. But unless you live near a scuba diving area, you are most likely going to have to travel a distance or even out of the country to do a good dive.

Now just think how much each trip is going to cost you and multiply that by how many times you would love to do scuba diving in a year. When you do the sums, it can be staggering. So you cut down the number of dives you want to do in a year, and then calculate and cut down some more.

In our scuba diving class, my husband and I were the only ones who continued to dive after the class was over. Even then, we did not manage to do the number of dives we would really have loved to do in a year. That’s how it finally ends up that we are doing an average of 1 dive a year. This more or less ensures that we will always be diving as a “scuba diving newbie” (hence the blog’s name). A scuba diver gets “rusty” when the interval is too long between each dive trip. Ideally, we should dive at least once each quarter.

I have not even gone on to calculate the other “investments” to personalise your gear such as your own BC (buoyancy control), your own octopus (breathing appartus) and your wet suit.

Having said all this, I still believe it’s never too old to learn and enjoy scuba diving. Even with our limited dives since we were certified and diving as scuba diving newbies, we enjoy each and every one of our dive trips. Find the right people to dive with, find a fantastic dive spot that suits your preferences (whether macro, to check out small sea creatures, or see bigger fish) and nearby spa facilities to sooth your body aches after a dive – it’s a wonderful combination that will almost always ensure a great scuba diving experience!

A scuba diving newbie can still enjoy happy diving!

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