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What's it like to dive the cooper? Watch this Youtube video!

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Fossil Diving in the Cooper River for Fossil shark teeth

The Cooper River is a world hotspot for fossil shark teeth. This summer a few adventurous divers met for a weeklong Cooper River dive trip. The divers were fossil legend Lee Cone, Trilobite aficionado Ted of The Nautiloid Network, and me. We chartered with Mark Johnson of www.divethecooper.com for the fossil dive trip.

Why are there fossils here?

Why is the Cooper River a hotspot? The geology of the area is very confusing, but in a nutshell, this river (and the other rivers) in coastal South Carolina cut through numerous layers of fossil bearing formations.

These formations include the Pleistocene Wando Formation, Pliocene Waccamaw Formation and Goose Creek Limestone, the Oligocene Ashley and Chandler Bridge formations, and many others. To complicate matters many of these formations contain older reworked fossils. A reworked fossil is a fossil that has eroded from its original layer, washed into a "bone bed" with other eroded fossils, and then because of sea level changes, became reburied into a younger formation.

Today, the Cooper river and adjacent rivers carve into these formations and erode out fossils. Due to currents, these fossils often accumulate in gravel beds on the river bottom. Adventurous divers can dive the Blackwater rivers and search these gravel beds for fossils.

What is it like to dive here?

For those who have not dove the Lowcountry Blackwater rivers, it's a unique and challenging experience. The river tannins make the water a dark brown color with very little visibility. At around 20 feet of depth, the sunlight is completely blocked and it's pitch black. By 35 feet, strong dive lights will only cut through the tannins by a few inches. On top of this, the bottom of the rivers are full of dead trees that easily catch and tangle dive gear. Since these are tidal rivers, the currents are often strong and can roll trees along the river bottom. If this isn't enough, mud balls made of the Lowcountry pluff mud will also roll down the river bottom. This makes dive helmets a necessity. Further, to compensate for the strong currents, one must add extra weight to their dive suit and use screwdrivers to dig into the river bottom and crawl. Compasses are mandatory for navigation. Finally, the rivers are full of alligators and sharks.

Why would anyone want to do this?

FOSSILS! We did pretty good during the trip, hitting numerous spots a day. Some dives were spent crawling around looking for gravel beds, but we ended up finding the gravel beds most of the dives. There were, of course, a few issues. One time someone forgot to strap on their dive helmet. As soon as they jumped in, the helmet with all the lights got lost to the sea! I lost a dive strap and screwdriver, luckily there were spares. One dive, I jumped in without my flippers. Since one doesn't really swim, but instead crawls, I didn't notice until I was on the bottom. By that time, I couldn't surface, because the strong currents would have put me way behind the boat. Instead, I spent the dive walking across the river, using my compass to get to the rendezvous point. On the bright side, we only surfaced near 1 large Alligator during the entire trip!

Besides for these mishaps, it was a great trip! It was nice to catch up with Lee and meet Ted. Speaking of Ted, he found the fossil of the trip, a really nice 5" megalodon. Lee found a nice 4" class megalodon, and I found a few nice 3" class ones and some larger angustidens teeth. We all found TONS of nice smaller teeth and other fossils, such as Giant Ground Sloth, Crocodile, Turtle, Horse, Whale, and even Mastodon material.

Make sure you check out the images below and view the dive video above! Thank you, Lee, for inviting me, and thank you Mark of www.divethecooper.com for the charter!

If you want to see some of Ted's finds, check out his Cooper River page.

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The sea requires offerings to grant safe passage. What offerings to Poseidon should one make to ensure safety? Apparently, these were our offerings:

Dive Helmet with lights (lost to the sea)
Flipper Strap (lost to the sea)
Screwdriver (lost to the sea)
Hat (recovered)
Flippers (forgotten - yes, there was a flipperless dive)
Dive Helmet (forgotten)
Water proof cap for dive light (forgotten)

Poseidon enjoyed these offerings and granted us safety in the harsh sea!

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Images of the fossil hunt and the trip

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Recommended Carolina Shark Tooth Books and Items:

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