Grand Marais resident Bob Brandt spent some of his time in Florida this winter hunting for shark’s teeth on the beaches. Pictured here are just a few of the teeth that Brandt found. Note the differences in their shape. Some have serrated edges while others are somewhat flat.
Two winters ago Bob Brandt was walking on a far-flung beach near Venice, Florida when he encountered a man who was looking for shark’s teeth.
“He showed me some, and they were interesting,” said Brandt. “I asked him how many he found, and he said he collected about 2,000 every winter.”
Impressed, Brandt said he began to look for teeth when he and his wife Julie made infrequent trips to the ocean.
“We lived quite a way from the ocean and we didn’t have much time to get to the beach,” Brandt said. That changed, however, when the Brandts bought a condo much closer to the ocean this year.
A former schoolteacher and an all-around handyman who is skilled in the building trades, Bob was amazed that someone could pluck that many teeth from the Florida beach sand. But if anyone were going to come up with a system that would improve on a way to collect shark’s teeth, it would be Bob.
This past winter the Brandts moved closer to the beach. Instead of making it to the shore once in a while, they were regular guests of the ocean waves, sun, and sand. While Julie caught sunshine, basking in her beach chair, Bob, well Bob got to thinking about collecting shark’s teeth, and he came up with a way to beat 2,000. By ten times.
“I found over 20,000 shark’s teeth this winter,” said the resident handyman and current high school driver’s education teacher.
“I set up a screen and shoveled sand, sifting the sand and finding shark’s teeth. Pretty much anywhere I set up my screen I could find more than 100 shark’s teeth without moving.”
Why is Florida such a hotspot for collectors to gather and hunt for shark’s teeth? At one time, the entire state was under water. The teeth Bob almost always finds are ancient, older than 10,000 years. That’s why they are jet-black or a glossy, caramel brown.
Throughout their lives, all sharks lose teeth and regrow new ones. This has been true for the entire time sharks have swum the oceans, about 450 million years, according to some scientists. That means there are a lot of shark’s teeth embedded in many layers of sand and dirt throughout Florida.
When asked what he plans to do with his vast collection, Bob said he would have bracelets or necklaces made from the best of his findings. “Out of 20,000 teeth, 19,000 of them aren’t worth much,” he added.
Large teeth, the rare megalodon shark’s teeth, are worth quite a bit of money. Bob hasn’t found any of those yet.
Megalodons went out of existence more than 2.6 million years ago. Their teeth were as big as 7 inches long and the sharks could grow as large as 60 feet in length and had a bite stronger than a T-Rex. Not that anyone was around to get bitten by both creatures to actually say which hurt more. But suffice it to say, both creatures had quite a bit of bite force.
Today there are about 440 species of sharks in the world, and there may be some new kinds that haven’t been discovered yet.
As for teeth, depending on the variety of shark, some have as many as 300 teeth in various stages of development at any one time.
Because their teeth aren’t well rooted, they come out easily. Some last only one week, and it has been postulated that sharks lose teeth at every feeding.
As for Bob, he plans to keep up his new hobby. Trading his snow shovel in for a sand shovel seems to work fine for him. And instead of frostbite, well, he might get a little sunburned, and a shark’s tooth might nick him. But that should make for a good story he can tell his grandkids as he shows them his vast collection and speculates how these ancient creatures lost their teeth.
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