Mike Harris
Beaufort’s Very Own Shark Tooth Fairy
story by LINDSEY LENOIR photos by PAUL NURNBERG
The tale of Mike Harris, Beaufort’s very own “Shark Tooth Fairy” is a true story of perseverance. Sitting with Mike today at his kitchen table, a pristine collection of fossilized shark teeth and bones on display before me, I immediately feel like I’m speaking to a seasoned Paleontologist. As he tells me all about what I see before me and the prehistoric back story of the Lowcountry, I can’t help but gawk at the extremely large Megalodon tooth sitting directly in front of me. I fight the urge to touch it for fear I might disrupt its ancient serenity. Immediately Mike assures me, “Go ahead and touch it! You know, out of all the diving I’ve done and all the teeth I’ve found, what you see right here is what I have held onto of museum quality. Sure, I could’ve sold any of these teeth and made a good bit of money. Yes, there are better teeth out there, teeth more beautiful and possibly better quality, but none can say they have been held and touched by over 5,000 kids, eager to learn about diving and fossils. That makes them priceless right there.”
Growing up in Beaufort, Mike had a misadventurous youth. It was one of these “misadventures” that landed him, by the age of 15, at AMIkids (formerly the Beaufort Marine Institute). The institute served as a launching point for him. While there, he obtained his GED and was taught life skills: sailing, fishing, even earning his deep water scuba diving certification.Mike would spend the next 20 plus years as a boat mechanic, sailing, fishing, raising his children, and living the easy life on his house boat. He was in his 30’s, working on larger boats that often required him to replace huge, heavy, 8D batteries, when he herniated his back. He went to the doctor and was prescribed medication for his pain. He was able to function with his back injury and continue to take care of himself and his family. It didn’t take long for him to develop a dependence on the medication to carry on normal life. Eventually, the dependence would manifest into a full blown opioid addiction. Being the overcomer that Mike Harris is, he decided to quit. However, due to prolonged exposure and dependency on the pain medication, his brain was no longer naturally producing an adequate amount of dopamine. “Things that I used to enjoy, I didn’t enjoy anymore. Things that were interesting and fun, just weren’t fun anymore.”
Mike knew he needed something in his life that would spark that excitement again. That opportunity would soon come, in the form of his next repair job. He was working for a man whose boat had capsized in the river. He recalls, “all of a sudden a 5 ½” shark tooth falls out! Because the boat was upside down it must’ve gotten wedged in the steering console. The guy, Jesse was his name, he was so happy that I found it because he thought he had lost it.” In talking, Mike would find that Jesse had been diving for shark teeth when he ran into trouble. This encounter immediately piqued Mike’s interest, he had maintained his diving certification since first getting it in 1986. He offered to fix the man’s boat for free if he would teach him how to dive for shark teeth. “For the first time in a long time, I was interested in something.”
The following weekend the two men headed out to go diving. “Naturally Jesse does not want to divulge any of his diving spots so he asks me if there is a particular spot that I knew of that was around 30 feet deep to get to the fossil layer.” Mike had a spot in mind, “I knew of a deep hole fishing spot that was around 30 feet deep.” The only problem was, the creek was only about ten feet wide and the banks were completely muddy. His friend didn’t bother to suit up and join Mike because the prospects looked dim, so Mike decided to go it alone. “I get in the water and it was just pitch black. You can’t see your hand in front of your face and you’re down there wondering what is in this creek with me? But I didn’t want to be called a chicken so I kept going down until I hit the bottom. I finally get the nerve to get on my hands and knees. I get to the hardpan, it kind of feels like asphalt, anything that falls on the hardpan can stay there for over a million years.”
Searching, he stumbled upon something smooth and triangular. Mike says he grabbed the object and surfaced, yelling to his buddy who was still in the boat. “I think I found one…well Jesse just jumps in the water in his swim trunks and swims over. Jesse measures the tooth right then and there in the water,” and is amazed by the fact that Mike Harris, on his first dive in a tiny fishing hole, had discovered a 6¼” Megalodon shark tooth.
From then on Mike was hooked. He would soon discover that he had gotten lucky the first time and that diving for shark teeth wasn’t quite as easy as he first thought. It would take Mike a little time, a few more dives, and developing his own special “shark tooth finding” technique involving two potato rakes, handles removed and tied together with string. Over time, he would learn that he did indeed have a knack for finding shark teeth, joining an elite league of successful divers in the lowcountry.
When Mike Harris started diving for shark teeth he was living on a houseboat docked on Lucy Creek. As he became better and better at finding ancient shark teeth and other various fossilized bones, his collection of artifacts grew and grew. Soon his houseboat began to tilt to one side. So, with permission from Stan, the dock’s owner, he started piling up his finds on the dock next to his boat. “Before I knew it, the dock started leaning and I get a phone call from Stan,” who happens to be a dear friend of his, “telling me that I needed to offload some of my shark teeth because his dock was leaning.”
Mike quickly thought of a solution that would lighten both he and Stan’s problem. The thought occurred to him that he could take some of his treasures to the Sands Beach in Port Royal. “I had the idea of recycling my finds. I put a post on social media that read something like, ‘Hey come out to the Sands today, I’ve put out some shark teeth!’ I never thought it would become what it is today, but I posted it for people to head out there with their kids and grab some shark teeth. I didn’t think about the fact that it was the middle of the week. I went out to see what kind of turn out there was, a lot of people turned out but I realized they were mainly adults.”
Mike had originally envisioned it to be for the kids and still had a lot of buckets of teeth so, “ I decided to do it on a Saturday and post it ahead of time.” He also decided to make his next hunt more of a challenge than finding teeth just thrown on top of the sand. “I buried a couple of buckets worth of stuff all along the high dunes…about 50 people showed up to the event and everybody had a great time.”
This was only the beginning for Mike, and his boat was still leaning over. So, after about a month of diving to acquire a few more “trophy” teeth, he was ready for his next hunt. He wanted to build on the previous hunts and for the first time in a long time, he felt good. That childlike adventure of treasure hunting was the beginning of a healing process for Mike, and doing the kids’ shark hunts unearthed something much more meaningful. These hunts would become the catalyst for his complete healing. “…Today, I’m just a happy guy!”
How the “Shark Tooth Fairy” Got His Name
About four years ago, a news article covered Mike’s story and dubbed him the “Shark Tooth Fairy.” According to Mike, the name just stuck. As word spread of the “Shark Tooth Fairy” and his amazing treasures, more people began to show up at the hunts.
In October of 2014, Mike and a few volunteers had collectively buried around a half a ton of fossils at the shoreline of the Sands Beach for the kids to find. “One particular hunt just blew up… there were people from all over! Around 2,000 people ended up showing up!”
Unfortunately, the hunt caused a traffic jam that traveled up Parris Avenue, onto Ribaut, and over the Battery Creek Bridge. The road had to be closed down to clear out traffic. Mike would soon learn, “there is a city ordinance, if you have an event with over 100 people, you have to have police security and traffic control…paid security.” Up until this point, all of his hunts were free. “It was all free, this was for me, a part of my healing. To see the excitement on these kids’ faces, that was enough right there.”
Undeterred and willing to do whatever it would take to continue the hunts, Mike decided to charge a small $5 entry fee to the adults only. The fee would only cover the cost for the required security and traffic control. Mike says he never intended to charge anyone and continues to offer the hunt free of charge to children. “They are what all of this is about anyway.” This time Mike was told he would now need a peddler’s license to charge people.
Following the hunt, Mike decided to host a special needs hunt in response to feedback that he had received from many of the participants about their desire to see a hunt that could accommodate children with special needs, those who couldn’t be in large crowds or who were confined to wheelchairs. He realized that this hunt would have to be on a much smaller scale, so he partnered with a parent of a child with special needs, and spread the word about his next hunt. “We informed people through social media that there would be a hunt for our special needs community. We said what day it would be on, but not the time or place.” Families that were interested were screened and then told the location and time. With the Coffin Pointe’s Homeowner Association’s blessing, Mike was able to hold his last free event before a string of unfortunate events would seemingly clip the “Shark Tooth Fairy’s” wings.
Mike’s previous paid hunt would garner attention from the South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Anthropology (SCIAA), and when it came time for Mike to reapply for his hobby license, he was denied renewal, the institute claimed he had used his license for financial gain.
Divers who live in South Carolina are required to have a hobby license, in which they are responsible for submitting a quarterly fossil report to the state. When it came time to do Mike’s quarterly fossil reports with the SCIAA , there was a kink in the process. Mike was told that he was required to give his GPS coordinates for his dives. A few weeks later he got a notice that his fossil report was not acceptable and his license would be suspended indefinitely. By this time, Mike had already scheduled another special needs hunt but had to cancel the event. “The hardest part about losing my license was the fact that I couldn’t hold the second special needs hunt because I just didn’t have enough teeth at that point to hold it. I was completely crushed thinking about those kids who were so excited about it and I let them down.”
Again, Mike Harris wasn’t going down without a fight! He felt that the Artifacts and Underwater Antiquities Act was being misused. By this point, all of Mike’s tooth hunts had been put to a halt and it stirred a public outcry that reached the ears of state representative, Shannon Erickson.
Mike’s story soon spread to Charleston and people started contacting Senator Sandy Senn, who just so happened to be a shark tooth hunter herself. With the support from almost every state representative, the SCIAA was contacted about reinstating Mike’s diving license to hunt for shark teeth and strangely enough, “The very next day I had a license in my mailbox! It didn’t even have a postmark on it! And what a great day that was…that same day I was back to diving!”
Mike immediately got to work planning his next hunt. This time he had a little help from his friend and fellow shark tooth hunter, John Taylor, John’s daughter Audrey Taylor Flores, and the March of Dimes. Mike was able to provide the biggest hunt to date, and all proceeds went to the March of Dimes.
Toward the end of our interview, Mike sits next to me at the table, scrolling through the 300 some odd pictures of the kids that have participated in his hunts. I am quite sure he knows the story behind every single picture, a doting father smiling and reminiscing about the day his child found a really cool shark tooth. That is why he does it. Just to put a smile on a child’s face. Mikes’ greatest discovery to date… “I have found the key to happiness. It’s to make others happy.”
