Hi all
Back in 1987 there was this search party going on when I was living in Bunbury, Western Australia, of a 12 year old boy, he seemed to have been gone for like 3 months and on one sunny sunday the local Fishermen caught a 4.20 metre White Pointer aka Great White Shake, which carries the scientiffic name:
Carcharodon carcharias
These beasts can grow from 6.5 to 8meters long, though there was a sighting of an estimated length of 9.20 metres, this was near the new mexico regeon in 1991.
so here the pics of the White Pointer that ate the 12 year old boy @ Koombana Bay, Bunbury, Western Australia 1987:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/38179-2/White+Pointer+Koombana+BAy_+Bunbury_+Western+Australia+1987.JPG]
With that yellow Toyota Land Cruiser in the rear and that White Pointer in front of it, it should give you an idea of the shark's bulky size.
I'm the boy with the Red / Green / White striped shirt and light blue shorts, after they opened up this shark when it was dead, they foudn the 12 year old boy chopped up in 3 pieces, this explained why the boy wasn't found, it seemed that the 12 year old boy swam beyond the safty of the ornage flags and was taken out to sea by a rip curl, something that happens without knowing.
For several decades, many ichthyological works, as well as the Guinness Book of World Records, listed two great white sharks as the largest individuals caught: an 11 m (36 ft) great white captured in Southern Australian waters near Port Fairy in the 1870s, and an 11.3 m (37 ft) shark trapped in a herring weir in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1930s. While this was the commonly accepted maximum size, reports of 7.5–10-metre (25–33 ft) great white sharks were common and often deemed credible.
more info here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_white_shark