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Sunday Talks: 'Sharks!' with Ret Talbot & Karen Talbot
Sun, Oct 06
|Eastport


Time & Location
Oct 06, 2024, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Eastport, 36 Washington St, Eastport, ME 04631, USA
About the event
The ocean’s apex predators have fascinated people for generations and the great white shark in particular is a creature of almost mythic proportions. Certainly the movie “Jaws” cemented the shark as the ultimate marine villain, pursuing humans and animals alike in its bloody hunt for victims. Yet the truth is different from movie fiction, according to Ret Talbot, an award-winning science journalist who has teamed with the country’s leading white shark researcher, Greg Skomal, to pen the book “Chasing Shadows.” In fact, he says the “Jaws Effect” has not been kind to these marine animals.
“Shark species are in trouble today,” Talbot says. “There have been changes to their ecosystems and overfishing. But the other part of that has to do with our negative perception of them.”
Talbot will discuss the white shark and other species in a talk on Sunday, October 6 at 2 pm, at Eastport Arts Center. Also in attendance will be his wife, Karen Talbot, a scientific illustrator who provided the drawings for his book. She will display artwork she has created featuring sharks.
Some of the research recounted in Talbot’s book has taken place in the Gulf of Maine where great whites have been returning in numbers. Several great white attacks have taken place along the Eastern Seaboard and recent studies show there could be as many as 1,000 great whites in Passamaquoddy Bay.
Talbot hopes that the book and his talks across the U.S. will help demystify the great white and make people realize just how the important the creature is and how at risk it remains.
“The thing that surprised me the most about the white shark is that they are cautious, adaptive, and yet very vulnerable animals,” he says.
One of the most supportive readers of Talbot and Skomal’s book is Wendy Benchley, the wife of the late Peter Benchley, the director of “Jaws.” She has said that the book casts new light on her husband’s fearsome protagonist.
“‘Chasing Shadows’ chronicles the research we’ve learned in the decades since and provides fascinating details about the great white shark in the northwest Atlantic, why it is an evolutionary marvel, and how it differs from other species of sharks. As a diver and shark advocate for the past fifty years, I reveled in reading the arc of transformation, from an era of ignorance to today, where shark conservation is applauded and admired.”
The talk is part of a series of Sunday talks that will be offered with free admission at Eastport Arts Center through October. Donations will be gratefully accepted, and used to help sustain programs like these.
Eastport Arts Center is at 36 Washington Street, Eastport, and is handicapped-accessible.