Island Cover Charters<\/a>. Gainey has found the teeth of beavers, horses, whales, dolphins, megalodons and ancient ancestors of great whites while walking around islands.<\/p>\n\u201cShark teeth are the gateway drug,\u201d Gainey tells his customers.<\/p>\n
Beyond teeth, Gainey has found spear points, pottery sherds, and a gold English coin from 1766 known as a King George III guinea. He understands the appeal of finding such exotic objects, especially old teeth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho doesn\u2019t like walking around and picking up treasure, right?\u201d said Gainey. \u201cYou\u2019re touching something that\u2019s never been touched by another human and that\u2019s millions of years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, Gainey warns about the potential of overharvesting Crab Bank and other islands. Even a plentiful supply of shark teeth has its limits, he said, and people don\u2019t always follow rules that limit where they can go on an island and what they can do and take.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt attracts the good, the bad and the ugly,\u201d said Gainey, who suggested that permits be required to visit islands popular for collecting teeth, shells, and other goodies, and that there be limits imposed on how many visitors a charter boat can bring to an island each day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would be a fan of regulation for the wildlife and the resource,\u201d said Gainey, who regularly picks up litter left behind on remote islands. He has observed graffiti on tree trunks in some of these places and evidence of people camping in prohibited areas.<\/p>\n
When Gainey takes customers on a boat ride to go beachcombing, he said he gently reminds people that many of the shells they pick up might otherwise be reused by crabs or other animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey were finding teeth from Day One until the end of the season,\u201d Kotwica said of shark teeth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6023,131285,31061,121088,79,8207,98813,131286,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-237388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-charleston-harbor","9":"tag-crab-bank","10":"tag-island","11":"tag-mount-pleasant","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-shark","14":"tag-shark-teeth","15":"tag-shem-creek","16":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}