Dancing with Sharks, and Digging Teeth!

Clicking thru emails at work last Thursday I spy the following email:

I signed up for the Cape Fear dive for Sunday. Jeff is not going. So his tanks are available. Plus, my new tanks came today.

Glenn


Early morning at the dock.

A short and to the point note, now I have to make a last minute call on the dive. Why? Because I don’t feel lucky….. The dive makes sense however, first its on Sunday so I don’t have to burn up a day of leave, secondly the weather and sea conditions are predicted to be good, and Meg-Head got extra 120’s I can bum. But, something inside me lets me know if I go I will not score on the Meg’s.

I decide to bit the bullet and sign up and call Eric at the shop: “Yeh Man, should be good! I’m even going out, getting outta the shop, my first dive for Megs. Weather looks great. Wanna give me your credit card number to hold a slot?”

“Yeh man, sign me up!” I say. I think to myself after hanging up the diving will be worth it, even if I don’t score big on the teeth scale. I just hope the bad feeling is not something worse like a premonition of a mishap….

Sunday morning I pull into a Hotel parking lot to pick up ole Meg-head. Glenn’s in high spirits as he’s the one feeling lucky today. That’s good for him! I say something about working hard on the bottom to even out my chances and who really knows about luck anyway.



Check out Scott's fin as he counts over 30!

At the docks, it’s the usual suspects. Big time local hunters Scott and Stan are on hand to give Meg-Head and Captain Guy a run for the money. Junior league scavengers, myself included are here too. Corporal Long and his cousin Trevor return from last months dive to try to up their numbers. They’ve the Meg flu. Dive shop countermen past and present Billy and Eric are going to pass the torch on vacuuming the bottom. An added bonus is having a bevy of young women divers take part on this charter. I know Captain Guy’s happy about that fact, and keeps a lookout to assist them when needed.

Dive conditions were great on the ledge and I figured I’d be able to do some big-time fanning on the bottom and pull up some choice mantle piece teeth. After, going down the anchor line and checking my gear, I slid my gloved hand thru my swim paddle and started to push up the bottom inside out. I pushed and pushed until I had to stop and switch hands. Finally, after 10 minutes and who knows how much sand I got a nice 4 incher followed soon by another 4 incher. With 4 minutes bottom time left I fanned and scanned the sand to no avail. “Not a good haul” I thought to myself as I ascended up to about 90 feet.

Visibility on the bottom was excellent, however at mid-water vis was poor. Oddly there were no thermoclines present. As usual I was one the first one back on deck due to my terrible air consumption rate however; as the divers came out of the water from the initial dive some big scores were ready to be shown on the deck. Scott pulled up a heavily loaded bag from the sea bottom and as he spilled out the contents some fine large teeth out of the 33 or so he found made this a awesome haul! After everyone was back on deck, Billy and Meg-Head each showed off a 6+ inch tooth they scored! Eric released from his shackles on the dive shop counter, scored 13 teeth on his first dive on the Ledge.



Captain Guy doing the song and dance
"I got teeth on my belly"

Captain Guy went down during the off-gas period and sure enough, all the divers got to see the hidden teeth in the wetsuit comedy show that Cape Fear is famous for! How does he get so many teeth each time is amazing!

Anyway, I was pumped to have another go at the bottom and was the first diver in and headed down the line. I worked the sand hard to no avail, then switching tactics swam a bit trying to pick out shapes in the sand. When I was at the end of bottom time I saw Meg-head and after swapping some signals I headed toward the anchor line on my compass heading. I was bummed as I only had 2 small 3 inch teeth, what crappy luck, just like I felt before signing up.

As I swam in the general direction of the boat and ascended slowly I could not pick up the line in the gloom. What I did see were the bubble stream coming up from the bottom even though I could not see the divers or the bottom.


Meg-Head's big 6 inch!


I made a bad decision at that time. Rather, than swim in the general heading of the compass I decided to ascend around the bubble stream thinking that the divers on the bottom are near the ship. As I started my safety stop at 20 feet I still couldn’t see the boat even though I was in a sea of bubbles coming from below. I knew I woundn’t like what I saw when I broke the surface, and sure enough as I emerged slowly from below and my mask broke the water there she was…….. way…. the…. F**K…..over there. Anyway, I had a nice swim back to the boat by myself, and wondered what happened.

What is it? We didn't know either.
Maybe a fossilized tree nut?

After the long swim back, stowing the gear, grabbing a sandwich and coke other divers started to pop-up way out, off starboard. Tiffany and Scott went out and swam the line out to help out the other divers while Captain Guy coordinated the rescue efforts. He needed a smoke after that…. Well, that explained why I was out of the area too, referencing their bubbles and all.
The third dive was on the Hyde and the sharks were out in force! I counted 16 off the stern and too close for my comfort with beasts coming out of the gloom from every direction. I headed back where more divers were and kept my eyes peeled the remainder of the dive.


Sharks on the Hyde
Photo by Tom Tilmon
For more diving action check out his site at:

http://members.aol.com/fpsndiver/fpsn11.html

Above Photographs by Sally Medling: For more photos of Dive on Hyde check out her site at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sallymedling/Hyde_08_10_08?authkey=WoE93Rhzl8o

Wow! It really was a great weekend! It’s not often enough that your average neighborhood relic hunter scores a trifecta of fun and success as I had recently. But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. Lets see, my dive buddy aka Glenn “Meg-Head” Branch had set up a 3 Dive run out of Carolina Beach to search for big money fossilized sharks teeth among other fossils that lie in 115ft of water 40 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

Piedmont treasure hunter N.C. Bob signed on for the trip from Asheville, and also changed the dive plan to a two day trip with 2 more additional Meg-dives for Saturday and a wreck dive on the way in. In all, 5 chances to score the big money 7 inch Megalodon tooth we all know is lying off the coast.

Simply put, the ocean conditions on Friday were excellent, with flat seas and a slightly overcast sky. As the 40 something foot dive boat “Hawks Bill” captained by the world famous Captain Guy churned thru the flat seas, schools of flying fish would stream across the flat aqua green water. Sprits were high as anticipation of finding many large teeth were the sign of the times as many of the divers were local guys who have scored some nice teeth before.

Soon we were at the site, and plans were made for conducting the dives. Me, I got a mixup on my tanks and now I had 120 cu in of regular air vice NITROX .

Captain Guy shows off his invisable ships wheel!

So I was going to have to be a little careful on the dive plans. Big Stride in, and Splash… Down the line I went however, soon it was apparent that as always it is just too hard to stay with the plan of action due to the ease of losing site of your buddy in the gloom, the cloud of sand kicked up while fanning and so on. If you are really down to find some teeth, normal diving procedures are thrown out the window anyway. You are really on your own at 115 feet.

As wonderful as the surface conditions were, thermoclines were present at varying depths. The cold water brought in weird loads of plankton type sea plants of some sort and hurt visibility. However, after 3 dives we all had a few keepers. I think I had 4 or 5 good teeth one being a 5 incher , Glenn and N.C. Bob had about the same. But, truthfully we were looking for a whole lot more! I figured I needed to find about 14, 3 – 4 inch teeth over 2 days to break even covering the cost of both days of scuba.

Glenn was in a foul mood, as we travelled back to Jacksonville. “They’re not bringing us to a good spot.

Calm seas are a Diver's dream 40 miles off the coast!

That place was all picked over”. He opined. “Hey man, you never know when your going to get lucky. Look, Captain Guy had a great haul on his dive. Next time it could be you or me.” I said as I tried to motivate Meg-Head, and convince myself that tomorrow would work out for us.

Early Saturday morning Glenn and I headed out from J’ville and after a pitstop at MickyD’s we were headed down Hwy 17 toward Wilmington. The weather conditions were just fantastic and the crowd that gathered at the dock foretold of keen competition for fossils during this trip. Soon we were joined by N.C. Bob and had all of our gear stacked and packed.


It was just simply a perfect dive day and things went pretty good on the first dive, I got about 5 teeth, Meg-Head 3 or 4 and N.C. Bob got shut out for the 3rd time in 4 dives. But on our final dive on the Meg ledge things got interesting. I dropped down the line, and took a fix on the anchor line and proceeded to drop down to the bottom. On my 3rd fan in the sand, there…. she…. was! A big ole tooth! I knew it was the biggest one I have found and as I twirled it around and saw it was in great shape I thought I won the lottery! I stowed it away in a zippered pouch on my BC vest and started to fan. I tell you what, it was the fabled “Honey Hole” that Captain Guy has named for teeth below the surface of the sand/rubble matrix. I was finding keeper after keeper and after each find I would shove the tooth straight into the top of my wetsuit, damn the scratches! Anything to save time and keep this lucky streak alive.

The haul for me on this one 15 minute bottom time dive was 13 teeth.

It was satisfying to finally have a lucky streak, but the real treasure to be found was; being able to have a couple great days in the sun goofing off with old and new buddies, shooting the breeze and talking teeth and treasure with other divers with the sea spray wafting in the air, that’s making memories! And brother that’s what’s life’s all about!
3 Amigo's in search of 10 million year old relics!