South Carolina

Myrtle Beach / Cherry Grove (SC)

Open access📚 Compiled from public sources

The Grand Strand isn't famous for fossil beach hunting — but it should be. The same offshore phosphate horizon that feeds Cherry Grove and North Myrtle drops small black teeth onto the wrack line after every onshore blow. Best at the inlets (Cherry Grove channel, Murrells Inlet) where shell hash concentrates.

⚠ Partial inputs

today

Great

4.7ft swing · neap tide · low 8:22 PM · post-storm · 4.5ft swell · +20 event boost

Today at a glance

Updated 2026-07-21T08:44:27.431Z

Solid hunting day. Best window opens around the 8:22 PM low (1.0 ft). Moderate SW winds (12 mph); seas 5 ft+ — murky and choppy.

Heads up: 5 ft seas — visibility will be poor; consider another day.

Next 3 days: Next few days look steady — all good-range. Pick whatever fits your schedule.

Best Window Today

8:22 PM

Plan around the great low-tide window. 4.7ft swing · neap tide · low 8:22 PM · post-storm · 4.5ft swell · +20 event boost.

Hunt score

Great

Astronomical low

1.0 ft

8:22 PM

Predicted real low

1.2 ft

above NOAA by 0.2 ft

Low-window wind

5 mph

Light — negligible effect

Tides: NOAA Springmaid Pier, SC (station 8661070)

Best window this week

Mon, Jul 27 · 12:38 PM

4.9ft swing · low 12:38 PM · 1.05" recent rain · +20 event boost

Score

Prime

Confidence: Partial — on-site outcomes, dossier verification. Hover the badge above for the input-by-input breakdown.

Tonight's moon

First quarter

49% illuminated

Sunrise 10:19 AM · Sunset 12:24 AM

Wind right now

12 mph from SW

Gusts 21 mph · best from E

Wind is cross-shore — neutral effect on tide level.

Past 7 days

Compare model output to your actual visits.

Next 7 days

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Tide times: NOAA CO-OPS station 8661070 (Springmaid Pier, SC) — local time, MLLW datum. Click to verify on NOAA. Cards show LOWS only (best for hunting); highs are visible on the tide curve below.

Tide curve · next 48h

🌤️ Weather & Wave Forecast

Impact on visibility and stir-up over the next 5 days.

Onshore Wind: Pushes water in (tide sits higher) and stirs up the bottom. Good for "new" teeth, bad for visibility.

Offshore Wind: Water blown out (tide sits lower). Maximum beach exposure for hunting the low tide line.

Why today scores 79

The Hunt Score blends tide range, lunar phase, daylight timing, recent stir, wind setup, and surf.

Wave height 4.5 ft

Best low

8:22 PM at 1.0 ft

Predicted real low

1.2 ft

Wind deviation

Less beach by 0.2 ft

Explain this scoreShow breakdown ▾

💡

Analysis

Highly favorable. Worth the drive.

Tide range

39.6 / 50

Today's swing is 4.7 ft (saturates at 6 ft = 50 pts).

Spring tide

1.8 / 15

Within ±2 days of a new or full moon = wider swing.

Daylight timing

6.9 / 15

Low in daylight = you can actually hunt.

Recent stir

0.0 / 10

Past 72h onshore wind churn (only counts hours that already happened).

Wind setup at low

-1.6 / 10

Forecast wind piles 0.2 ft of water around the low.

Surf bonus

5.0 / 5

1–4 ft of recent surf = clean sorting; >7 ft = unfishable.

Recent rainfall

0.0 / 3

No measurable rain in the past 48h — no runoff signal.

Storm multipliermultiplier

1.15×

Peak gust 38 mph triggers post-storm boost.

Event boostadded

+20

Manual + auto events (storms, drought, beach renourishment).

Why not higher? The biggest unused headroom today is spring tide (+13.2 pts available). A day with that maxed out would score around 92.

Show the math

components: 39.6 + 1.8 + 6.9 + 0.0 + -1.6 + 5.0 + 0.0 = 51.7 × storm multiplier 1.15 = 59.5 + event boost +20 = 79.5 final = 79

What's NOT in this score

We are deliberate about which factors to include. These are not currently in the model:

Hunt pressure. A “hunts this week” chip is shown on each location page for transparency, but it does not change the score yet. We need more outcomes per site before a penalty would be statistically meaningful.
Wave period / swell direction. We use wave height only. Long-period groundswell sorts material differently than short wind chop, but Open-Meteo doesn't expose period reliably.
Barometric pressure trend. Falling pressure = approaching storm = building stir. Currently we wait for the wind to actually arrive.
Water temperature, clarity, salinity. Affects comfort but not (directly) what teeth wash up.
Weekday vs weekend. A 70 on Tuesday is often better in practice than a 70 on Saturday because of crowds, but we don't adjust for that.
Beach renourishment. Fresh sand buries everything. We capture this only when an admin logs a manual event — there's no auto-detection.

If you think we should add one of these, log a hunt with notes — every rated outcome helps us decide which signals actually predict tooth count.

Hunt Score

Sum of components × 1.15 + 20 event boost, clamped 0–100.

Score model 2026.04.29 · how this is calculated

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We predicted 79. Tell us how it actually went — your rating calibrates the model.

model 2026.04.29

Reading the last 14 days of hunt logs…

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Geology

FormationsReworked offshore phosphate / Pleistocene shell hash

EpochsMiocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene

Age~15 million to 100 thousand years (reworked)

Star speciesGaleocerdo aduncus, Carcharias spp., Carcharhinus spp.

Technique

Walk the upper wrack line on a falling tide, especially the day after a 15+ mph onshore wind. Concentrate at inlet mouths and at recent beach-renourishment fill (newly pumped sand often contains teeth).

Access

Public beach access points throughout Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle, Cherry Grove, Murrells Inlet, and Pawleys Island. All free, open dawn-dusk.

🗺 Open in Google Maps 🧭 Open in Apple Maps

Legality & ethics

Open beach surface collection is fine. State law prohibits removing live wildlife and certain shells (whelks under size limits).

Hazards