Venice Beach Got Wider This Summer. What Does That Mean for the Shark Teeth?

"There are fewer shark teeth because we put 200 feet of sand where there was none before," Venice Mayor Dean Calamaras told The Ledger in March 2005, just as the city began its second beach restoration. "You still find them on the beach. You just don't find them in such high numbers."

Twenty-one years later, Venice has a wide new beach again. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Weeks Marine placed about 620,000 cubic yards of sand along 3.2 miles of shoreline this summer, from just south of Venice Inlet to just south of the Venice Fishing Pier. That stretch includes the strip where most of us dig for teeth. Wider beaches are good for storm protection and beach chairs. For the Shark Tooth Capital of the World, the record from earlier projects points to a simple rule: the hunt now happens where the waves are still doing their work, and the one beach the sand trucks skipped now takes a walk to reach.

Eleven years of erosion, replaced in one summer

The last renourishment on Venice Beach was in 2015. Since then, normal erosion and the 2024 storms took their share. Helene brought a 6-foot surge to Venice Beach, and Milton brought a 10-foot surge. The new sand came from an offshore borrow area about 11 nautical miles southwest of the project, off the Englewood coast. The $27,495,000 construction contract was 100% federally funded.

The pace picked up as the summer went on. The city's tracker counted about 58,000 cubic yards on the beach by July 1, about 340,000 by July 22 and about 550,000 by August 12. Dredging and sand placement ended on August 16. Officials held the ribbon cutting on Friday, October 2, with the traditional toss of a bucket of sand.

The project also ran straight through turtle season. Mote Marine and its partners relocated 524 nests, saving about 50,000 eggs, according to the Venice Gondolier's completion coverage. The city lists turtle season as running through October 31.

What the first two projects did to the tooth beds

Venice's teeth have a geological source. The town sits along the Peace River Formation, a submerged layer packed with prehistoric marine life. As waves and tides wear away that ancient seabed, fossil teeth wash into the surf. Renourishment puts a thick layer of new sand on top of that process.

The 2005 Ledger piece put numbers on the effect after the first restoration in 1996. A veteran hunter estimated that the time it took one visiting family to find two dozen teeth would have produced about four times as many before the city started pumping in sand. He also said the 1990s fill "did have some shark teeth" but "nothing particularly great," and that the second project would bury the beds even deeper. In the same article, the mayor noted that Fernandina Beach was already being called the Shark Tooth Capital of the World too.

Officials at this year's ceremony said Venice Beach has now had four nourishment projects since 1995. No local report this year has said whether the 2026 fill holds more teeth or fewer, so the honest answer for this season is that nobody has published one. What the history does show is where the teeth keep showing up after each new layer of sand.

Where teeth surface on a freshly widened beach

On September 24, about five weeks after sand placement ended, WWSB filmed a hunt on Venice Beach with the family behind Shark Frenzy and Fossil Frenzy. Their method focuses on the one part of the beach that the new sand doesn't cover for long, which is the strip where waves break and sort the sediment:

• Target the gravel. Look for dense, dark shell beds and coarse sediment right where the waves tumble onto shore.
• Scoop and rinse. Dig into the wet shell hash and let the Gulf water wash the fine sand through the mesh.
• Spot the gloss. Scan what's left for smooth enamel, triangular points and root shapes that stand out from broken shell.

Color is the tell. Modern shark teeth are bright white. Venice fossils are jet black, slate gray or deep charcoal from millions of years of mineral absorption. The usual finds come from lemon, bull, tiger, mako and snaggletooth sharks. Stingray mouth plates, barracuda teeth and the occasional chip of megalodon also turn up. A wide, soft upper beach is a fine place to set up chairs. The teeth are at the waterline.

The beach the project skipped

Caspersen Beach lies south of the renourishment zone, which ended just south of the Venice Fishing Pier. Its shoreline didn't get this summer's layer of fill. Getting there is the hard part. Sarasota County's Caspersen Beach page says the Harbor Drive access washed out in the 2024 storm season, leaving vehicle parking, restrooms and the playground closed. You can still walk or bike in from South Brohard Park or along the Venetian Waterway Trail from the City of Venice Festival Grounds.

A fix isn't coming soon. In the most recent detailed report, the Gondolier quoted county Parks director Nicole Rissler: there was no timetable until the county decides whether and where to restore vehicle access, and the work would be "multiyear." At that point the road hadn't entered design, engineering or permitting. In May 2025, the city said it would work to add 90 to 100 parking spaces along Harbor Drive around the Fishing Pier to make up for the lost Caspersen parking. So a fall morning at Caspersen starts with parking near Brohard and walking south with a sifter.

Close-out work still on the calendar

The ribbon cutting didn't end the work on the sand. The city's beach renourishment tracker still listed these items in its latest entries:

Brohard Paw Park has had the most interruptions. The county closed its beach portion during sand placement in August, kept it closed through rock remediation south of the pier and reassessed daily. The October 6 update scheduled one more closure for October 7. As of today, October 10, the tracker hasn't posted a later entry confirming reopening, so it's the page to check before you load the dog in the car. Turtle nests near the last onshore pipes had hatched by September 30, which cleared the contractor to pull those pipes.

Gear, identification and the April festival

The sifter many of us carry was invented here. In 2013, the father-and-son team behind Shark Frenzy and Fossil Frenzy co-invented the Shark Tooth Sifter, a lightweight floating sifter built for the Venice surf. Both shops sell beachcombing gear and identify finds. Shark Frenzy is at 262 Tamiami Trail S, and Fossil Frenzy is at 272 Miami Ave W, according to the Shark Tooth Sifter site. Earth Treasures also sells sifting tools and helps identify beach finds, and the Venice Fossil Museum operates inside the shop. Visit Venice describes the museum as a public charity focused on fossil outreach and education, at 235 Miami Ave W. At the pier, Papa's Bait Shop rents and sells the long-handled sifter locals call the Venice Snow Shovel, according to Visit Venice.

The next big date is the Venice Sharks Tooth Festival, set for April 10 and 11, 2027. Vendor applications are expected online in mid-December 2026. By then the new sand will have had a winter of fronts and tides to start sorting it, which is how Venice's teeth have always reached the surf line.

Shark tooth hunting is one of my favorite ways to spend a Venice morning, and I'm happy to share what I'm hearing about the beach as the close-out work wraps up this month. If you're planning a visit or thinking about life near the water here, Arlene Buckmaster would love to hear from you. Let's Connect.