Back in the Eighties, I was partying down in Point Judith with friends, and a crowd of people were talking excitedly out in the street. When we asked what was going on, they said someone had caught a white shark and it was at a dock up the street.
We went over to take a look, and by the time we got there, the shark had been completely butchered and the removed jaws were sitting on the sidewalk with a guy standing inside the bloody jaws! That was the first time I had ever seen with my own eyes anything like that, and I was able to examine it closely...the teeth were huge, and were obviously sharp enough to cut when I ran my finger lightly along the edge. Each tooth was just a bit smaller (by maybe a quarter to a third) than the triangle I could make with my thumb and forefinger from each hand held together to make a triangle.
Pretty amazing to see.
But what was equally impressive was a pectoral fin some Asian guy had finagled from the corpse...it was longer than my arm. He was sitting with it on the curb trying to saw through it with a huge knife with a round end, with no success. He would saw unsuccessfully for a minute, then using the curb next to him as a whet stone would try to put some kind of edge on it, and then would try again to saw. But that pectoral fin was enormous!
To get an idea of the effectiveness of a sharks jaws, take a piece of toast and take a full bite out of It, and look at the miniscule bite size a full grown human has.- Tom