The Margin: ‘Holy s***! Look at this thing!’ Fisherman films encounter with great white shark

Jeff Crilly, a veteran shark hunter, was with his friends off Manasquan Inlet in New Jersey when he had a “once in a lifetime” experience — he came face to face with a great white shark estimated to be about 16 feet long and 2,000 pounds. Read More...

When life imitates art…

Jeff Crilly, a fisherman from Toms River, New Jersey, showed off this “Jaws” tattoo to NBC Philadelphia this week:

Why? Because “that’s exactly what happened to us,” he said.

Well, not exactly. He didn’t get eaten alive. But still…

Crilly, a veteran shark hunter, was with friends off Manasquan Inlet in New Jersey when he had a “once in a lifetime” experience — he came face to face with a great white shark estimated to be about 16 feet long and 2,000 pounds.

Here’s the footage:

“This thing is huge and we all started going crazy. Never seen anything like this before,” Crilly told NBC after the clip went viral overnight. “We definitely were afraid of it coming into the boat more because it easily nosed its head up past the silver rub rail and it could’ve easily pushed the boat down or worse, jumped in.”

Experts told NBC that Crilly’s brush with the great white, which has seen its population rise in the area, may have been a hungry mother about to give birth.