Can These Hedge Trimmers With Fins Avoid a Brush With Extinction? Scientists have found that sawfish are thriving in some habitats while vanishing from others. A largetooth sawfish released into waters in northern Australia after being rescued from a drying floodplain waterhole.Credit...Peter Kyne By Lesley Evans Ogden Feb. 10, 2021 Sawfish look something like hedge trimmers with fins and can reach lengths of 17 feet. To Jasmin Graham, president and chief executive of Minorities in Shark Sciences, it’s sometimes hard to believe such weird fish exist. “They look so intimidating if you look at them from the top down,” she said. But from the bottom, “they have these cute, adorable little gray mouths that kind of look like they’re smiling.”