Venice Florida Magladon Shark tooth hunt

It was Friday Nov 18 when I began the trip towards Venice, Florida. Stopping to pickup the owners of Scubaextreme and one other diver, the four of us in two vehicles begin our adventure.
Along the way, we pit stop in Zepherhills to eat dinner at Outback Steak House, mmm mm mm. After dinner, I put the truck in cruise and we sleep the rest of the way there.
Now, after checking in 6 of us head out to find a place to … pahtey… Finding most places close at 9AM on a Friday night we find the Pineapple Express. Two live bands that played until Midnight.
At 2AM, they tell us it’s time to go. Was it because we reached our limit? No… Because they are closing. We all head back to the hotel and 3 hour later we are still all up. It was almost 5m before we hit the sack. It’s now Saturday and we have to be at the boat for our dives for this day. Talk about diving dizzy we all made it, well except for one.. A little too many martoonies and the rest of the day was spent in bed. That’s OK.. She had fun and so did we.

Saturday, the 7 of us head to Hot Dawgs for Breakfast. It’s around 11:00 AM and we have to be at the pier at 11:30.. 30 minutes is enough time to order eat and get o the dock… 🙂

We made it in time to meet the boat and allow some of us that need to get in our drysuits time to do so. We load the boat with everything we don’t need and head offshore. The 7 of us performed two afternoon dives. Max depth 29 feet. Water Temp. 68 degree Farenehit. Perrrfect weather, Sunny until the storm kicked in during our last dive of the day. You could tell something was up above the surface because it got dark, making it harder to search for teeth. As I approach the surface, I was horizontal and facing upwards. I could see rain drops hitting the surface of the water. Ahh, it’s Raininig I think, and how cool to see the other side of the water when being hit with rain. Everyone came back with teeth, Meg’s, and more..

Saturday night we made our way to Captain Eddies for a seafood dinner. I ate Hog fish, some ate Tuna and Grouper and soft shell crap.. All good. This night, we were all whooped from the previous night and the dive and did not close any bars. We had to be at the dock at 7:30AM Sunday to meet the boat.

Sunday, we begin our trek toward the dock with a pit stop at Dunkin Doughnuts. Turn left here… drive 2.7 miles, do a U-turn, drive 1 mile, Do a U-turn, drive to the docks.. What Dunkin Doughnuts? There was no Dunkin Doughnuts… Darn GPS gadgets… We get to the dock, the boat is there and we show up with NO doughnuts… Captain yells out, I”ll be back in 3 minutes as he and Tiny take off in the Dodge to Dunkin Doughuts to return with coffee and two dozen donuts.. Phew… We needed that! We are now good to go. The Captain is Happy and that’s always a good thing!

We head out for the second day of diving for teeth, Not much luck for most of us but Jason comes back with a tooth that is 6-7 inches.. Bong! WOW nice find… Wasn’t a Meg but it was BIG! You can find lots of bones from Dudongs(sp), vertebre and smaller teeth. Fish follow as you stur up the bottom, all looking for an easy meal. They don’t seem to be shy because at one time during my dive, I notice one staring into my mask on the right side of the mask. It caught my eye and when I turned to look it was less than an inch away from my face.. Cute…

We all depart back to shore with our find for the day, teeth, bones and shells. KC was the winner with the ‘best’ tooth, Jason for the largest tooth and a tie with everyone for the smallest tooth. We all turned out to be winners. Fun weekend…

These dives are good for all levels of experience. Calm seas, light current, shallow depth (30 feet) and great bottom time (We limited the time to 1 hour). Three of us used one tank for two dives (Steel of course, lots of cubic feet. :-)) Got to try this at least once. If you live in the Venice area, I’m sure you would be doing this a lot. Some of these teeth go for $1000’s of dollars, so the opportunity to make some $$ is good.

© 2011, admin. All rights reserved.