Sharks

It’s mid-summer on Cumberland and the salt marsh is teeming with young fish and shrimp growing up rapidly in these nutrient rich waters.  Blue crabs are mating now and are regularly seen in shallow areas along the shore where three to five foot long bonnet head sharks move in to feed on them.  In an area so productive for small marine and estuarine animals, it’s only natural that the larger predators would be here too, and it has been that way for a long time.

On these hot summer days one of the favorite activities of visitors is to walk the shaded main road searching for fossilized sharks teeth.  Recently, the National Park Service has been filling low areas in the road using sand and crushed shell from a man made island on the south end of Cumberland.  The spoil bank was created when a nearby boat channel was dredged long before Cumberland became a National Seashore.  As a result, fossilized bone fragments from prehistoric animals along with sharks teeth were brought up with the rest of the fill.  Searching for these ancient relics has long been a past-time for both Island residents and visitors, but with recent park road work, it has become even more so.  Of course, those involved in this activity want to find the largest specimens which come from the ancestor of the great white shark, a predator that reached a body length of over fifty feet and had teeth as big as a human hand.  A few specimens this size have been found on Cumberland, but many more smaller teeth from a number of different species are much more prevalent.

Sharks go back about three hundred million years in the fossil records and today there are still at least twelve species that inhabit the coastal waters of Georgia.  During the summer months they will move into the shallow areas near shore to feed, especially on incoming tides at dawn and dusk.  Surf fishing for red fish is a popular sport on Cumberland this time of year and in the process some sharks are usually caught also.  Most of these are bonnet heads, black tip and lemon sharks.

Visitors often ask if it is safe to swim here.  All I can say is there has never been a recorded shark attack and people swim and surf off the beach all the time.  But one has to use some judgement also by not thrashing around in the water on an incoming tide after sundown when sharks are more likely to be feeding.  These sea going predators are actually very common in the waters up and down the east coast and anyone who has ventured into the ocean most likely has been close to a shark.  On Cumberland a few people get to see bonnet head sharks feeding in the salt marsh creeks this time of year along with some sharks caught off the beach by fishermen.  But lately, most visitors have been searching for the fossilized teeth of sharks that lived here millions of years ago.