.07 Valentine’s Weekend: Holden Beach, NC
February is a big month at our house. My birthday is the 6th, Valentine’s is the 14th, and my husband’s birthday is the 25th. We’ve had a lot going on lately, so I figured why not combine them all and head to Holden for a weekend. We invited some of our closest friends from college, brought our kids, and split a house right on the beach.
If you’ve read my About section, you already know my family has been going to Holden every summer, and some Octobers, for a little over 30 years. I’m very familiar with the area, but I did not get deeply into shelling and fossil/shark tooth hunting until last year. Talk about wasted opportunity, am I right? But alas, I know now. And since I am not one to half ass anything, I spent months educating myself on all things Holden - the Peedee Formation, the geological deposits and timeframes, Carolina creams, and the best spots on the island to hunt. Holden was already somewhat known for shark teeth, but it became a beachcombing hotspot in 2022 during the beach renourishment project. The sand dredging uncovered an undisturbed bed of Late Cretaceous age fossils, including sea biscuits (Hardouinia mortonis), bryozoan, extinct oysters, and fossilized teeth and bones. The majority of this sand was deposited on either side of the pier, with the right side usually offering the best luck.
Our family has always stayed at the very last house on the east end of the island - Blue Skies. She’s no longer available to rent, but I have more than a few very fond memories of summer weeks spent in that house. And while the shelling is alright down there, I was really after the fossils and teeth this trip. So the house we got for this weekend, in the 700 block of OBW, was right smack dab in the middle of this hotspot. And again, because I must do everything full throttle, I was up at the crack of dawn each and every morning. Early bird gets the worm and all that jazz. And all the miles, the hours, the sore legs, going out in the drizzle and high wind, it all paid off. And it paid off handsomely.
I can honestly say this topped all my previous beachcombing trips by far. The variety, and quality, of the items I found was spectacular. Top favorites included the sea biscuits, bryozoan, blue crab claw, finger sponges, orange scallop, two mosasaur teeth, horseshoe shell, the first piece of sea glass I’ve ever seen on Holden, and a living Luidia clathrate (Lined sea star, gray sea star, Slender-armed starfish), which was returned to the water. Being the off season, there was very minimal trash, but I did come across a helium balloon and a few cigarette butts.
Quick side note here - DO NOT RELEASE HELIUM BALLOONS OUTSIDE EVER. Not only do these balloons look like food, studies have shown they absorb the smell of the sea water and end up SMELLING like food too, which make them twice as appetizing to marine life. Instead, try planting a tree or a field of wildflowers that are native to your area. Other options include origami animals made from bio-degradable paper, luminaries, or even flying a kite with your special messages written on it. These all have minimal environmental impacts, and will leave the Earth cleaner than the alternative.
Other honorable mentions include 3 imperial Venus clams (fondly known as the Pawley’s Island shell), 15 crow shark teeth, 2 tiger shark teeth, some stunning pink Calico scallops, keyhole limpets, fossil coral, a dolphin that looked suspiciously like it had been finned, what I think is a Native American bead (measures 1/2” across, pictured far right), a snaggletooth, a Rhombodus binkhorsti (extinct species of ray) tooth, and several of the fossilized bivalves from the Peedee Formation.
