The apex predator — named Unama’ki — was raised alive and kicking from the water on a platform and painstakingly measured at 15 feet and 5 inches long and 2,076 pounds.
Awe inspiring creatures.
I was staying overnight down in Point Judith, RI down near the water back in the eighties, and we were having a party and someone came in and said someone had caught a huge White Shark, so we all jumped up and walked over.
By the time we got there the crowd was dispersing, the shark was nowhere to be seen, but there were two remnants:
One were the jaws that had been cut out with all the teeth still attached. The teeth were bone white, brilliant white, and the contrast with the bloody jaw was striking. And the teeth were huge and very sharp. I ran my thumb along the edge, and it was clear that if I hadn’t been careful, I could have cut my thumb. The jaws were big enough that I was able to stand freely inside that huge toothed opening, over my knees! Sadly, this was before the days of ubiquitous digital cameras and cell phones, otherwise I would have had a great picture!
The other remnant was a huge pectoral fin, longer than my outstretched arm, being sawed at by a wiry Asian fellow who had taken it and was sitting on the curb with a cigarette poking out the side of his mouth, ineffectually sawing away at the thing with some long knife with a rounded end, and he would occasionally pause to use the concrete curb like a whet stone, but...I didn’t believe he was going be successful.
That must have been one huge shark, I wish I had seen it before they did whatever they did with it.