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…