An alligator hit the beach for a swim at Oak Island, bringing spectators and screams

North Carolina beachgoers are accustomed to seeing a lot of different creatures in the ocean, but an alligator turns heads.

Numerous Facebook posts on Friday noted the presence of an alligator swimming in the surf at Oak Island.

Chuck McCullen of Cary said he and his family saw a crowd of people walking down the shoreline watching something in the water. He thought it was a turtle.

It wasn’t.

“We joined and saw it was an alligator about 20 feet out, swimming parallel to the shore,” McCullen said in a message to The News & Observer. “It appeared to be about 5 feet — 6 feet long. We followed it about half a mile as it swam along the shoreline. Occasionally it would go under water and pop up about 10 feet away. Whenever it popped up, a few people would scream.”

Other videos and photos posted on Facebook on Friday showed the gator closer to the shore or on the shore at water’s edge.

Allen and Ginger Lakey posted a very clear video of a gator — presumably the same one — swimming under the Ocean Crest Pier at Oak Island on Friday. They estimated the gator to be about 10 feet long.

Major Tony Burke of the Oak Island Police Department said it had received reports of the gator. He said sightings there are not all that uncommon and that the animals usually keep their distance from people.

Burke said the gators are there to feed or wash off parasites.

“I’ve been here 20-plus years, and they’ve been here every year,” he said. “It happens a couple times a year. They migrate across the dunes from freshwater ponds and marshy areas. Unless they’re being aggressive toward animals or people, we don’t do anything to them.”

Burke said he’s never known one of the alligators to be aggressive toward animals or people.

“We just tell people to stay away from them,” he said.

This story was originally published September 1, 2018 at 3:10 PM.