Biologists Weighed South Carolina's Record Alligator—Divers Below the Dam Say It Wasn't the Big One

In September 2010, ten minutes into a hunt on the canal between Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, a crew pulled out an alligator that tipped a certified scale at 1,025 pounds — still the benchmark in South Carolina more than fifteen years later. But a story has followed that animal ever since, told by divers who work the dark water near the dam and claim they've seen something that makes it look small. We walk through the lakes, the morning of the hunt, and a strange fact about South Carolina's record-keeping that almost nobody mentions. Stay to the end, because the part everyone skips is the part that actually answers the question.