Watch: Divers Find Two Intact Mammoth Tusks Off Venice Coast

VENICE, FL — Two scuba divers made the finds of a lifetime on separate diving trips: two intact Columbian mammoth tusks in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Venice.

Blair Morrow and Ryan Picou with Aquanutz Scuba Diving Charters discovered the tusks during routine dives last fall. Morrow, a divemaster, mate and backup captain, found her tusk in November, while Picou, a mate, spied his on the Gulf floor in mid-December.

While finding mammoth tusks farther inland — mammoth fossils are often found at construction sites near Peace River and other areas — it doesn’t happen very often in Gulf waters, said Capt. Mike Konecnik, Aquanutz’s owner. “Finding a whole tusk in the Gulf is very rare.”

The Columbian mammoth found its way to Florida more than a million years ago, he said. “It was bigger than the modern-day elephant and kind of like the wooly (mammoth) but without all that hair. It wasn’t that cold down here.”

Watch the Aquanutz crew as they discover and unearth two mammoth tusks in the Gulf of Mexico:

Konecnik has a secret Gulf location where “there’s a lot of mammoth material,” and he sometimes brings charters there.

“Sometimes you find a pocket like that with a lot of mammoth material,” he said, noting that he previously found a partial mammoth jaw with teeth, individual teeth and a leg bone there.

This location is where Morrow and Picou discovered their tusks.

Morrow was swimming through the area in November picking up turtle shells when she noticed something sticking out of the water. She swam over to it and pulled on it, “but it didn’t move,” she said. “It was just an inch out of the water. As I fanned the sand away, it got bigger and bigger.”

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When she realized she was uncovering a mammoth tusk, she tossed the turtle shells aside. With her air getting low, she tied a marker to it and swam up to the boat to get others to help.

She uncovered an 8-foot-long tusk with the tip intact, “which is rare,” Morrow said. It later broke into four pieces, one of them crumbling a bit.

“It took three of us to get the largest piece up. It was crazy,” she said.

After this, she jokingly challenged Picou to find the other tusk from the same mammoth, he said. “You’re always hopeful you might find more of the same animal, but it’s not likely to happen, especially a tusk in that condition.”

Aquanutz charters dove at that location numerous times without finding the matching tusk. Then, on Dec. 12, Picou spotted a tusk sticking several inches out of the sand and immediately recognized it.

“There must have been a certain pattern of waves or a good storm came through and uncovered it, because it hadn’t been there earlier,” he said.

He found it a couple hundred feet away from where Morrow’s had been buried. It’s a much shorter tusk, though — about 4½ feet long — and not from the same animal, he said. “I’m not an expert, but I think hers might have been a male tusk and mine a female tusk.”

Both are currently soaking their tusks to remove the salt and plan to stabilize the fossil using glue or a resin mix, so they can display them at their respective homes.

“The ivory itself is very unstable. Even in fossil form it doesn’t maintain structural rigidity,” Picou said. “That’s why it’s so rare to find these complete tusks.”

Months later, the experience “still feels kind of surreal,” Morrow said. “It’s amazing to find something like this. It’s all kind of crazy.”

Picou added, “It’s definitely a cool find. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever found.”