A beach made of old teeth
Florida once sat under a warm, shallow sea full of sharks. Sarasota Magazine explains that the fossil teeth turning up on Venice beaches date to the late Miocene and early Pliocene, somewhere between 2 and 23 million years ago. As sea levels fell, the teeth stayed locked in sediment, and erosion now carries them back to the surf line. The town bills itself as the Shark Tooth Capital of the World, and the beaches back it up.
Most of what you find comes from sand tiger, lemon, bull and other sharks, extinct and modern, and the prize everyone hopes for is a megalodon tooth as big as your palm. Surveys of the fossil beds off Venice have recorded at least 45 species of fossil sharks and rays. Lucky searchers also turn up dugong ribs and bits of whale bone.
Caspersen Beach, on Venice Island, is one of the most productive places to hunt because its shoreline has not been heavily rebuilt with imported sand. Look where the waves break, in the dark, phosphate rich sand the surf churns up. Locals use a long handled sifter, nicknamed the Venice snow shovel, and the magazine notes you can buy one at every local Publix. Patience matters more than gear.
The pier and the fish
The city's fishing pier at Brohard Park, 1600 S. Harbor Drive, has been the town's front porch on the Gulf since 1966. It was wrecked by a storm in 1981, rebuilt in 1984, replaced in 2004 and refitted in 2019 with ipe decking, fish cleaning stations and sea turtle friendly lighting. It runs 720 feet into water about 16 and a half feet deep at the end. When we checked in October 2026, the City of Venice still listed the pier as closed after damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, so look at the city site before you bring a rod.
Spanish mackerel are the easy supper along this part of the Gulf. The FWC leaves them open in every month with a 12 inch fork length minimum and a limit of 15 per person. Snook take more care, because a state boundary runs across Venice at a latitude near the Venice Municipal Airport. North of that line, in the Sarasota Bay region, snook are closed from May 1 through August 31. South of it, in the Charlotte Harbor region, the summer closure lasts through September 30.
