For the Chandler family in Nova Scotia, the discovery of a 3-metre blue shark on the shore of the same waters they swim in was quite the shock.

"I thought maybe if I went to an aquarium or something, but I never thought in my own cove I'd see a shark wash up on the beach," Allison Chandler, 12, told CTV Atlantic.

Allison and her two brothers, Matthew and Mark Chandler, found the shark on the shore near their Chester home on Monday. They initially thought it was a surfboard.

Their father, Alan Chandler, works for the provincial government's Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and said it's rare for a blue shark to range so close to Nova Scotia's shores.

He said it was difficult to say how the shark died, as it did not have any external marks on it.

"It could have been old age, because it was a very large shark," he said.

Mark Chandler said he tried to pull out a shark's tooth as a souvenir.

"We opened the jaw and there were teeth, and we tried to get one out but we couldn't," the youngster said.

His older sister had better luck the next day, managing to remove a tooth.

"Blue sharks have seven rows of teeth so it was pretty crazy we got to open up the jaw and look inside. It was kind of scary to imagine if my hand was in there," she said.

Besides photographs, the tooth is the only memento of the family's close encounter with the shark, which disappeared later in the week, likely lost to the high tides.

With a report from CTV Atlantic's Jill Matthews