A female great white shark approaches, it’s mouth wide open.

It’s enough to send a shiver up your spine, unless you’re filmmaker Dave Riggs.

Riggs was in a boat near the Neptune Islands in South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, shooting footage for his new Discovery Channel documentary, when the shark surfaced and decided a close inspection of Riggs was warranted.

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 In a Facebook photo post, Riggs writes: “This is how a great white ‘sniffs’. We must protect this magnificent creature!”

In a promotional clip for Discovery’s Shark Week, which begins on July 5, Riggs adds: “She was around 4.5 metres in length and extremely inquisitive of what we were and what we were doing.

“Of course, great whites don’t have hands, so she was researching the area in the only way she knows how – and that’s with her mouth.”

“This photograph (the shark’s bloodied teeth) is quite dramatic but it really highlights how awesome these apex predators are,” Riggs says.