A
schoolteacher from New Jersey has returned from her trip to South Africa with a
remarkable up-close photo of a great white shark that has been making waves on
social media.
Amanda
Brewer, 25, an art teacher from Gloucester County, traveled halfway across the
world to volunteer as a scientific data collector for White Shark Africa - an
organization dedicated to animal conservation and eco-tourism.
Brewer,
a lifelong shark enthusiast and amateur photographer, was enjoying cage diving
in Mossel Bay off Seal Island one day hoping to catch a glimpse of the
much-maligned sea creatures - and she didn’t have to wait long.
Cue 'Jaws' muisc:
Amanda Brewer, 25, an art teacher from New Jersey, took this incredible picture
while cage diving in Mossel Bay, South Africa
Shark selfie: Brewer,
pictured here with a much smaller shark, traveled to Africa to volunteer
as a scientific data collector for White Shark Africa
Upon her
return home, Brewer hung her now-famous picture of the shark with its mouth
agape in her classroom at Whitman Elementary School in Washington Township to
inspire her young students.
The vivid snapshot has
been shared thousands of times on social media sites and has been the subject
of fawning news articles, blog posts and TV segments.
But Brewer also has been
subjected to criticism from shark advocates over the use of bait in the taking
of the photo.
Speaking to GrindTV, the New Jersey educator explained that the fish
heads used to lure the shark were pulled around and out of the way of the cage
to make sure the sea creature didn't lunge and the steel bars.
‘That’s one thing that we learned right off the bat, is that you
never want the shark to make contact with the cage,’ she noted.
‘And
you also don’t want the shark to eat the bait. You don’t feed the sharks;
that’s not what we want to do.’
Brewer
added that the fish-eye lens on her camera made the shark appear closer to her
than it was in reality, which was about 3 feet from the cage.
She
said the shark came out of nowhere, and she was simply at the right place and
at the right time with her trusty GoPro at the ready.
‘I’d
been waiting for this kind of experience my whole life,’ Brewer told LightBox.
The
makers of GoPro took notice of Brewer's ringing endorsement of their camera and
featured her photo on their Twitter account, which helped the shark-tastic
snapshot go viral.
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