wilkere
Full Member
- Sep 11, 2007
- 138
- 22
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 1
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Excalibur, Tesoro Silver Sabre
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 . 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. 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!
bob
http://www.okinawarelics.com
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 . 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. 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!
bob
http://www.okinawarelics.com
