Tiger Sharks Are Now Converging En Masse On The Florida Panhandle

The Island Pier juts 1,262 feet out from the sugary white sands of Florida’s Okaloosa Island, between Fort Walton Beach and Destin. Since the early 1970s, this pier and its predecessors have been etched in sunset photos of the Gulf Coast, casting silhouettes on generations of sunburned American vacationers.

For decades, like other familiar panhandle sites including the Pensacola Beach water tower, Big Kahuna’s waterpark and the ever-present rumble of fighter jets up and down the coast, the pier on Okaloosa Island has changed little as the surrounding coastal communities have grown from fishing villages into condominium-lined cathedrals of salt and sun.

Today, 5.3 million beachgoers travel to this stretch of the Florida panhandle each year. Most migrate from homes within driving distance of the seashore. In the suburbs of cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, Nashville, New Orleans and Memphis, “Salt Life” stickers and circular “30A” icons cling to the windows of SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans. Each denotes that the owner is a member of a kind of deep-fried vacation club that journeys to this accessible slice of paradise just a drive from the comforts of home.

In the past four years, those vacationers have been joined by a new kind of visitor that has been migrating en masse to Okaloosa Island—tiger sharks. Since 2021, groups of them have been mysteriously converging on the Island Pier. What seemingly began as an aggregation of around 10 sharks has now grown to a cumulative population that could exceed 100 different individuals throughout the summer.

Researchers now believe the event may represent one of the largest gatherings of tiger sharks in the world.

Following Their Nose

Destin-Fort Walton Beach and a group of research partners use an acoustic tag monitoring station at the Island Pier to document the movement of fish species. Historically, most of the data recorded has been produced by roaming sportfish like tarpon or redfish, as well as sea turtles and other shark species like blacktips, bull sharks and sandbar sharks. Recent summers, however, have started to change that picture.

Tiger sharks are an apex predator. They’re at the top of the food chain, above nearly all other species of shark on the Gulf Coast. While they, too, are native to these waters, tiger sharks have never been recorded here in numbers like this.

“We’ve tagged almost 40 tiger sharks in total,” says Destin-Fort Walton Beach natural resources chief Alex Fogg. “Based on tag data, it seems like there are a lot of animals that we have not tagged that are coming in and out of the system. We could have two or three times the number of sharks in the area than we have tagged.”

A marine biologist by trade, Fogg keeps one foot in the biology door and a thumb on the pulse of tourism in Destin-Fort Walton Beach. Fogg and the Destin Fort-Walton Beach Natural Resources team are working with Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and the U.S. Geological Survey to learn more about where the sharks are coming from, and why they’ve decided to linger around this specific pier.

The sharks appear to be drawn in by a naturally-occurring death of thousands of Clupedia forage fish around the pier. Researchers theorize that the tiny bait fish are schooling in such numbers that they deplete the available oxygen in the water around them, creating a school-induced hypoxia that causes a mass die off. Fogg says tiger sharks, a notoriously lazy predator, usually arrive a day later to clean up the mess.

Thus far, the sharks have arrived every year since 2021 in mid-June. They usually depart by early August.

So far, acoustic and satellite tag data has shown sharks migrating to the Island Pier aggregation from as far away as the Florida Keys and western areas in the Gulf of Mexico. However, research teams believe the sharks may be arriving at the pier from as far away as the East Coast and the Caribbean.

Island Pier also offers a relatively protected area for the apex predators to dine. Shark fishing is banned on the pier, and while anglers can catch and harvest tiger sharks in federal waters, Florida state waters create a nine-mile, no-take protection area for the animals.

An Unprecedented Opportunity For Ecotourism

Among tiger sharks, Island Pier appears to be unique. Though similar fishing piers are located in nearby Pensacola, Navarre Beach and Panama City, tiger sharks are not appearing in the same numbers there. The behavior pattern may be reliable enough to create a boon for ecotourism in the region.

On June 30, Fogg’s team installed an underwater camera beneath the Island Pier, providing a stream that will go live later this summer.

Right now, the tiger shark aggregation is still largely flying under the ecotourism radar. However, a clue to its future impact could lie on another American coastline 2,300 miles away in California. Each year, an estimated 80,000 travelers venture to California’s Pismo Beach to see a congregation of tens of thousands of iridescent, orange monarch butterflies lingering in a diminutive eucalyptus grove. The monarchs contribute to an estimated $158 million economic impact in San Luis Obispo County.

Island Pier is uniquely positioned to benefit from a similar ecotourism draw. If the pattern holds, travelers could soon be marking their calendars for the tiger shark aggregation on Okaloosa Island.

“I don’t think you will find this anywhere else in the world,” says Shane Reynolds, a Destin-based cinematographer who volunteers with Fogg’s Natural Resources crew to gather data from submerged monitoring stations near Island Pier. “Normally, if you are going to see a tiger shark aggregation, you need a passport and a boat. You need a dive certification. Here, you just need two dollars to walk out onto the pier and you can watch them without even getting wet.”

Until now, casual visitors to the Florida panhandle have never had an opportunity to see apex marine life like tiger sharks this easily. “You really have an incredible opportunity to watch this co-habitation of apex predators and people that has been happening for four years now,” says shark conservationist and Discovery Shark Week host Kinga Philipps.

Philipps is one of the world’s most visible advocates for tiger sharks, having filmed extensively in the water with them on scientific expeditions around the globe. “To see them in numbers, you’d normally have to go to Tiger Beach in the Bahamas or Tiger Zoo in the Maldives. You may have to go to French Polynesia. Up until now, tiger sharks have not been super accessible. They have an exotic appeal to people because they aren’t normally seen by beachgoers. To have the ability to stand on a pier and literally count sharks from above is insane.”

Coexisting With Travelers

Researchers believe there is space for both human and non-human travelers to share Island Pier in the summer. In 2024, there were 47 confirmed unprovoked cases of shark attacks on humans. Only two of those attacks (one in Hawaii and one in Australia) were attributed to tiger sharks. In both cases, humans were inadvertently infringing on the shark’s space.

At Island Pier, swimming and diving activities are restricted year round. Diving is not allowed without a permit. Swimming is not allowed within 150 feet of the pier. Researchers believe the sharks already have room and space to feed.

Fogg, Reynolds and Philipps are all quick to note that in the four years this shark aggregation has been observed, no swimmers have been harmed by the animals, either. At Island Pier, tiger sharks are showing little interest in beachgoers away from the pier. Food sources they might normally prey on—like passing sea turtles and tarpon—appear to be disregarded in favor of an easy mouthful of bait fish. “These tiger sharks spend all day circling the bait fish and eating the dead ones off of the bottom,” explains Reynolds. “It’s a simple life for them, and it’s pretty fruitful. They are all pretty fat and happy.”

There is hope that by drawing attention to the aggregation, visitors will be more mindful of research efforts taking place during peak visitation months and be more curious about the world of tiger sharks. “So far, we are all good around the pier,” adds Philipps. “But there does need to be an awareness and a consciousness of their presence. People need to know that these sharks are not messing with people, but they do exist at Okaloosa Island in numbers.”