The Alligators Below Florida River Dams Are a Different Breed — And Divers Knew Before Scientists

Below Florida's spillways and lock structures, there's a churning stretch of water where commercial divers work blind in tea-colored current, feeling their way along concrete they can't see. For decades, the divers came up with the same story — something enormous is holding its ground down there, bigger and bolder than anything sunning on the banks — and almost nobody outside the job believed them. In this video, we look at what actually makes these tailwaters so valuable to large male alligators, and why an accident of 1940s flood-control engineering ended up growing some of the state's most impressive animals.