Shark Tooth Hunting on Amelia Island

You do not need a guide for this, and that is worth saying before the operator list. What you need is the tide table and twenty minutes of technique.

Timing beats location, decisively

Go at low tide. The range here is 6 to 7.4 ft, which on a beach this flat exposes a very wide band of sand twice a day. Everything in the swash zone that was underwater six hours ago is now walkable and nobody has been over it. Today's predictions.

Better: a falling spring tide. The bigger tides around the new and full moon expose more than the quarter-moon neaps do.

Best of all: the morning after a storm. Heavy surf digs into the bottom and throws older material up the beach. This is the single most productive condition, and it is why winter — clearer water, more weather, fewer people — is a better season for it than July.

The technique

Look for a colour and a gloss, not a tooth shape. Fossil teeth here are black, grey or brown against pale shell hash, with an enamel sheen that does not occur in broken shell.

Scan the shell beds rather than clean sand. Waves have already sorted the heavy material together for you, so the productive ground is where the shell has collected, not the open stretches.

Get your eyes low, walk slowly, and work parallel to the waterline rather than up and down.

Where

Anywhere along the island's thirteen miles, but the quieter accesses win on unpicked ground: North Beach and the numbered Fletcher Avenue accesses are street parking with nobody there, Burney Park at American Beach has a free lot and restrooms and is still quiet, and Amelia Island State Park at the southern tip sits by the Nassau Sound inlet. See quietest beaches.

The rules that come with the beach

From 1 May to 31 October this is a sea turtle nesting beach: fill in any hole you dig, take everything off the sand overnight and stay clear of marked nests. Surface hunting is fine; digging pits is not. See sea turtles.

Guided trips

Two operators run guided fossil trips, which are worth it for the identification and for children who want someone to be excited with. See also shelling for what else washes up here, and where to find shark teeth for the short answer.

We publish no prices, times or durations for any operator on this site, because we have confirmed none. The address, telephone number and official website below were checked against each operator's own listing on 10 September 2026 — ring them.