A group of vacationers was sipping drinks at Skull Creek Dockside in Hilton Head, South Carolina, when a restaurant manager casually let them know there were sharks and an alligator swimming off the dock. Gina Athans, a longtime visitor from Chicago, didn’t believe it—until she walked outside and saw fins in the water. Then a snout. Then the TikTok started filming.
“I’ve been visiting Hilton Head since I was 12 years old, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Athans told The Island Packet. She counted five lemon sharks and one alligator drifting through the brackish water, each seemingly unbothered by the other’s presence. “We were about 50 feet away, and I saw a whole fin. I was mind blown.”
The footage has since gone viral. The gator hovered near the dock’s edge, half-submerged and still. The sharks circled slowly, their fins cutting through the surface. A few kids watched from above, hoping for action. Instead, nothing happened.
Sharks and an Alligator Spotted Sharing the Same Waters in South Carolina
According to Morgan Hart, Alligator Project Leader for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, sightings like this aren’t as rare as people think. “In coastal areas, sharks and alligators encounter each other quite a bit,” Hart said. Skull Creek is brackish, meaning it’s a blend of fresh and saltwater. Lemon sharks, which prefer warm saltwater, and gators, which usually stick to freshwater, can both hang out here if the conditions are right.
And as long as they’re roughly the same size, there’s not much reason to panic. “They’re not a threat to each other either and coexist well,” Hart said. Of course, if one happens to be much smaller than the other, nature might take its course. But in this case, both parties seemed more committed to chilling than hunting.
The bigger risk, Hart warned, comes from humans. Feeding or harassing alligators is illegal—and dangerous. Gators that lose their fear of people can become aggressive, especially if they start associating humans with snacks. “It creates an animal that would normally have a fear of people into one that might intentionally approach people for food,” she said.
For now, though, Hilton Head’s wildest dinner guests have left peacefully. No fights. No bites. Just a shark-gator hangout that somehow didn’t end in disaster. Florida, take notes.
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