Seeing a six-foot sand tiger shark suddenly appear right in front of you would surely make your heart skip a beat or two. But Tanya Houppermans, who nabbed this incredible shot 15 miles off the coast of North Carolina coast, says it was no big deal. With a smooth flick of its tail, the shark moved along, its beady black eyes set on bigger fish. “You would think it got a smorgasboard of food it can fill up on,” she says. “But that just didn’t happen.”

Sharks so terrified Houppermans as a kid that she refused to wade into water more than knee-deep. But by the time the former Department of Defense mathematician started diving in 2009, she realized her fears were exaggerated. Some 500 dives later, she’s come to love the creatures. “They’re so misunderstood,” she says. “Only six people die from shark attacks worldwide, but we’re killing 70 million of them.”

She regularly dives in the waters near Morehead City, about five hours from her home in Virginia, to see them. People call the area “the graveyard of the Atlantic” due to the hundreds of shipwrecks dating back to the 16th century. All those downed ships provide a wonderful habitat for fish, which draws predators like sand sharks, bull sharks, tiger sharks and even great whites. Dolphins and whales occasionally pass through too. “It’s one of the best places in the world for diving with big animals,” Houppemans says. “The ecosystem is so vibrant.”

Last month, Houppermans led a team of scuba divers on a search for sharks in the rusted remains of the Caribsea, a cargo ship sunk by a German U-boat in 1942. She had descended about 60 feet when she noticed a huge shadow in her corner vision. A two-story wall of fish towered above her, blocking out the sunlight. A dozen sand tiger sharks churned through it, whipping in and out hunting for a meal.

Houppemans quickly swam into the throng. She snapped hundreds of photos with her Olympus OM-D E-M1, secured in a waterproof casing and connected to two strobes by aluminum arms and fiber-optic cables. Everyone once in a while, a shark bumped her. “It was a very surreal experience,” she says. “You feel like you’re being hugged by all these fish and sharks.”

A hug from a shark. Not scary at all.

UPDATE: 11:20 08/04/17: This article originally incorrectly identified the shark in the above photo as a tiger shark. It is actually a sand tiger shark.