Massive alligator terrifies tourists: ‘Beach and zoo at the same time’

Sea you later alligator!

A tourist’s seaside getaway turned into a scene from a SyFy horror movie when they spotted an enormous alligator swimming in the ocean off an Alabama island over the weekend.

Footage and images of the freshwater reptile’s estuarine excursion are currently making a splash on Facebook.

“It’s not every day something like that happens,” the terrified tourist, Matt Harvill, told WBRC after posting the shocking snaps to social media.

Harvill and his girlfriend had been spending a “beautiful day” on Dauphin Island — a popular tourist hotspot — when a bystander alerted them to the presence of the scaly invader.

“My girlfriend and I were just spending some time on the beach when someone mentioned it,” said the Mobile native, who walked down the shore to get a closer look.

That’s when he spotted the huge reptile frolicking about in the waves. As he was unaccustomed to seeing a swamp-dwelling creature at sea, Harvill whipped out his phone and got a video.

The resultant footage, captioned “the things you never think you’ll see,” shows the gator lurking rather conspicuously in the surf.

“Tell me where you can go to the beach and the f–Ing zoo at the same time,” Harvill drawls on camera.

The Alabaman found the sighting particularly incredible given that he generally only sees gators in freshwater and almost “never in the Gulf [of Mexico] like that.”

Indeed, alligators — which are the US’ largest reptile, regularly growing up to 15 feet long and weighing over 1,000 pounds — typically prefer to inhabit freshwater ecosystems such as rivers and marshes.

That’s because they don’t have saltwater glands — a salinity-regulating mechanism located under the tongue — like their crocodile brethren. This allows the latter to reside in both brackish water and saltwater full time.

However, the alligator’s lack of an iodine filter doesn’t prevent them from taking seaside sojourns eveyr now and then.

Indeed, scientists found that gators often visit estuarine environments in pursuit of marine prey, including blue crabs, stingrays and even sharks.

In 2003, a transient gator was spotted feeding on a nurse shark in a Florida mangrove swamp.

Meanwhile, a 10-foot alligator terrified Florida beachgoers this past October after it emerged from the salty depths and waddled its way ashore.