The Best Time and Beaches to Find Shark Teeth
Written by North Carolina novelist and lifelong shark tooth hunter Christopher Laney.
Quick answer for those searching and ready to hit the beach: One of the best times to find shark teeth is the hour or two before low tide, through the turn, early in the morning, with the sun behind you. The best beaches are the ones known for them, like North Topsail in North Carolina and Venice Beach in Florida, but there are many more. The piece below will help you become a better shark-tooth hunter and tell you the best ways to spot these fossilized treasures.
I’ve been searching for shark teeth on beaches for a long time. The activity is meditative and helps clear the mind, at least until exhilaration spikes when I see the perfect tooth and snatch it up seconds before a wave surges in.
The popularity of searching for shark teeth seems to have increased over the years. I come across more people actively looking for them than when I started at a much younger age. During our week-long beach vacations, my family and I usually find over a thousand shark teeth.
After seeing some of our treasured samples, some people ask how to find more, while others are frustrated that they never find any at all. This post is for those new to shark-tooth hunting, as well as those who want to increase their hauls. What follows are the best ways I've discovered to spot shark teeth on a beach.
As an aside, I don't work aviation into every post, but something I learned during flying lessons helped me become a better shark tooth hunter. I love when flying skills spill over to life on the ground.
Know the Expected Shapes and Colors
Train your brain to look for dark triangles
Teeth still in a shark’s mouth are white. I’d recommend leaving those where they are.
But the majority of the single shark teeth scattered on beaches are dark colors, mostly black with grey, but you can find them in a variety of hues, including reddish-brown to rare blue ones. These teeth have been fossilized over thousands of years, if not millions, and it’s part of what makes them special.
Their fossilized color comes from the sediments that sealed and infused them over time. Make sure you are looking for color versus white. I've found only a handful of white ones in my years of searching.
Aside from color, look for triangles. Most shark teeth have three distinct points. When you first begin looking for them, you must train your brain and eyes to spot these points or triangles.
Have you ever seen the magic eye puzzles? You look at lines and zigzags that don't appear to be anything, but if you relax your eyes and let them blur slightly or stare into the distance, you suddenly see a 3D object, like a jet or tiger. Or maybe a shark.
Training your mind and eyes to see shark teeth is similar. Look at a patch of sand with shells on it near the waterline and think shiny dark triangles. Focus on any shiny dark object and ask yourself, is it a triangle? When you do this, the teeth often reveal themselves.
If you are not sure, pick the object up and examine it. Most shark teeth, when free of sand, have a blackish-grey gloss to them, especially if they are still wet from an ebbing wave. Train your mind and eyes to look for these shiny dark triangles, and you will find teeth—if you are in the right place.
Look on the Right Beach
My youngest son found this one at North Topsail Beach in North Carolina.
Shark teeth can be discovered in many surprising places, including graveled roads, winding creek beds, or even river bottoms. Some ocean-bed sediments that captured shark teeth eons ago are now part of rock layers high above sea level, and as those places erode, shark-tooth fossils make their way down streaming waterways to the ocean and wash up on beaches. Looking on the right beach is important.
Some beaches may have none at all. But other locales have an abundance of them. My family finds a lot of them at North Topsail Beach and Surf City in North Carolina. Many Florida beaches are ripe with them too, including Venice Beach on the Gulf Coast.
For a few years, we vacationed at Holden and Ocean Isle beaches in North Carolina, and while we love the beauty and relative quiet of those areas, we became frustrated by the lack of shark teeth. I think it has something to do with the geography of those beaches since they run almost east-west and are situated under the overhang of Bald-Head Island. Maybe the longshore drift that transports sand, shells, and shark teeth doesn’t deposit as much of the material to the sheltered lee of beaches below Bald-Head. Regardless, I’ve never found as many shark teeth at those beaches even though I’m good at spotting them.
Make sure the beach you plan to visit is known for having its share of the shiny dark triangles
Search at the Right Times and Beach Areas
You can find shark teeth most any time at the beach if there’s enough light to spot them. But you can find many more at certain times and situations. Here are several:
Low tide - More beach is exposed at low tide, so there’s additional hunting ground. I will search for shark teeth any time I’m on the beach, if not reading or playing games with the family, but if it is low tide during daylight hours, I'm there looking. I like to search an hour or two before low tide until the time it begins to come back in. As the tide ebbs and the waves retreat with it, I don’t fight the water as much. Nothing is more disheartening in shark tooth hunting than spotting a prime specimen right before a wave moves it to some place you aren’t. After getting experience, you learn to be quick in these situations. But even the best shark tooth hunters will have those moments when a wave sweeps away a tooth moments before it can be snatched up.
Gentle slopes - Look for parts of the beach that have less slope. Steeply sloped parts are tough because retreating waves pull hard on shells and teeth as water rushes back into the ocean, taking most of those items with it. On gentler slopes, however, the waves seem to leave more to search through. The waves also tend to deposit more material at the top of the slope.
Shell deposits - Walk down most beaches and you’ll see areas where mounds of shells are grouped by similar sizes. Anytime I come across these, I search them, often finding several teeth. It’s especially easy if you look right where the waves are hitting these deposits because water is pulling material away little by little, exposing shells and teeth against the sand where it’s easier to spot due to the contrast.
Low glare - Make sure the sun is behind you or just over one shoulder so you don’t get a glare from the water or wet sand. This glare limits what you can see. You may miss teeth you would otherwise find in optimal light.
Early morning - As early beachcombers often get the best seashells, early risers sometimes get the best shark teeth. But every ebbing wave creates a new landscape, so you never know what it may deposit.
Sand bars - Sand bars sometimes emerge as the tide retreats. As they do, waves are not as forceful over those bits of land, so bigger teeth are often deposited and not pulled back into the ocean. Also, the little tidal pools left on the shore side of the sand bar can be a great place to find larger teeth.
In the surf - Some of the larger ones I’ve found have been in the surf where the water is hitting me somewhere between my ankles and calves. This scenario can be frustrating if the waves are coming too fast. But if the waves slow down some, there can be five or six seconds in between when you can see the bottom after the water stops churning and the foam clears. Use this time to spot a massive shark tooth like the one I found in the Everyday Magic post.
After a storm or offshore dredging - Any time something churns the water and sand right off the shore, more shark teeth usually make it to the beach.
Stare Instead of Scan
In aviation, a mid-air collision can ruin your day, so pilots are on a constant lookout for other planes. Early in my flight lessons, my instructor told me, among other things, not to continuously scan the sky ahead but to break it into sections and stare into them for a few moments. When your eyes constantly move, they can miss the planes, especially if they are far away. But if you stare for a few moments, the planes become visible.
It’s the same with spotting shark teeth. If your eyes constantly move, you can miss the teeth. Instead, pick a spot and stare for a few moments, looking for the shiny dark triangles. You are much more likely to see the teeth than if you do a continuous scan. Over time, with some practice, you’ll become great at spotting the teeth in an area with a brief stare before moving on to the next spot.
Start Small, Then Think Big
The largest shark tooth I’ve found. Click the image to read the story of finding it.
If you’re a rookie shark tooth hunter, try getting close to the shells and sand to look for teeth. If there’s a lot of material in your vision, and you are at a beach known for having plenty of shark teeth, you will find tiny ones that most people miss because they are walking and looking from a standing height.
Many of these tiny ones can be well-defined and just as exciting to find as the bigger ones if you are new to shark tooth hunting. More importantly, starting small gives you practice spotting the shapes and colors.
After some time, you’ll get better at spotting them while standing tall and walking because your mind and eyes know what to focus on. Once you become good at finding the small ones, you can find bigger teeth by covering more ground while walking and looking at the larger objects scattered on the beach.
Make it a family affair
When my boys were younger, they were not as interested in searching for teeth as I was, but they'd join in anyway. It didn't take long for the thrill of finding nice ones to pull them in deeper. Each year that passes, they spend more time searching.
My youngest, who is most like me, has a particular knack for it and has found some great ones, like the one to the right, which he turned into a necklace. Because the boys now love it and spend more time doing it, we've gone from averaging five to six hundred on vacations to over a thousand. When we all spread out to comb sections of the beach together, we find an extreme amount.
Lose yourself
I mentioned the meditative aspect of shark tooth hunting, and besides the exhilaration of finding a large, pristine tooth, it's one of the main reasons I enjoy the activity. Searching for the teeth relaxes me and keeps my mind mostly in the present. I’ve also noticed that if I simply clear my mind, more teeth seem to present themselves.
I’m not sure why, but I think when my mind is active and absorbing the activities going on around me—swimmers, surfers, people walking and playing on the beach—I lose focus and miss many of the teeth around me. But once I zone in on the sand and let everything else fall away, I find plenty.
Beyond the Beach
Some of our favorite shark teeth we’ve found on North Carolina beaches over the years.
As mentioned before, shark teeth can be found in lots of places other than beaches. As water cuts through sediment layers, it can expose all types of fossils, including shark teeth. Scuba divers often find massive ones in riverbeds, sounds, and waterways.
Rock quarries can also have an abundance. I have a friend who once found a large shark tooth in a driveway that had been refreshed with new gravel. So keep your eyes open when hiking and walking. You never know what you may spot, including another prized find that resembles a triangle: an arrowhead.
I hope this helps you find more shark teeth when at the beach, but one word of caution. The activity can become highly addictive. Your beach vacations may never be the same.
Happy shark tooth hunting and good luck!
If the part about losing yourself—the hours when the rest of the world falls away, and you're simply looking—landed with you, you’ll find more of that in the novel I wrote. Flying Colors is the story of a man who stops waiting for his real life to begin and discovers his purpose by revisiting the things he loved in childhood. You can get the opening chapters for free in the footer below.
