A tourist captured video of an alligator swarmed by sharks in the town of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Gina Athans and her family were dining at the Skull Creek Dockside restaurant when the fascinating scene began to unfold, WFLA-TV in Florida reported Tuesday.
“My family and I had just sat down to order our drinks when one of the managers came up to us and mentioned that there were sharks and an alligator out on the boat dock,” Athans said according to Fox Weather.
Video captured sharks and an alligator swimming together in a boat dock beside a restaurant. https://t.co/0DcShh1nFd pic.twitter.com/ZWm6AieVGn
— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) August 21, 2025
“My first thought was ‘there’s no way they’re hanging out in the water together,’” Athans said.
The video captured a shiver of sharks swimming in the marina.
Then the camera showed a motionless alligator drifting out from under a nearby dock before disappearing from sight.
“I’ve never seen such a big shark before,” a woman in the video said.
Would an alligator win a fight against a shark?
Another video showed the alligator casually floating among the sharks.
An alligator was unfazed by a shark’s bite near a dock in South Carolina. pic.twitter.com/0Y6Fm7jRtW
— USA TODAY Video (@usatodayvideo) May 28, 2023
Even as sharks swarmed near, the gator remained still and indifferent.
Someone threw an object into the water, apparently trying to scatter the sharks, but it had no effect.
At one point, a shark bit the alligator’s foot, causing it to erupt to life.
Moments later, however, it returned to its unflinching state.
The predators recorded in the video were lemon sharks, according to The Island Packet, a newspaper in Hilton Head.
“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.
Skull Creek, where Athens had the encounter, is a brackish water area, meaning it’s a mix of both fresh and salt water.
Morgan Hart, the Alligator Project Leader for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said alligators will often enter salt or brackish water to eat or mate.
Hart said the two species, which often encounter each other in coastal areas, aren’t usually threats to one another.
“If they’re near the same size, they’re not a threat to each other either and coexist well,” Hart told The Island Packet.
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