Shark Week is eight days of fun, documentary-ish shark shows on Discovery Channel. Sea Shepherd, the ocean conservation group, joined in the conversation via YouTube. As you may know Sea Shepherd inspired my MerSea series books—Superfreak (Book 1), Superflop (Book 2), and Superfly (Book 3).

Sea Shepherd has finally teamed up with Madison Stewart, “Shark Girl Madison,” who was inspiration for my Breanna character in Superfreak (Book 1). Breanna has about one scene in the book.

I would love to swim with sharks like Madison—in the wild of course. That would be a better way to drive tourism rather than killing these fish. But thanks to the movie Jaws, I’m afraid of sharks. And the weird thing is, Valerie and her late husband Taylor, were shark and marine conservation experts who helped film some of the shark sequences for Jaws. They were the first to film great white sharks without a cage. I doubt they knew what a terrible impact that movie would have. Ron passed away in 2012, but Valerie continues their mission of marine and ocean conservation. And Madison grew up idolizing her fellow Aussie Valerie, so much so, that she wore a yellow ribbon in her hair like Valerie. The ladies were able to meet during the filming of the documentary Blue. Check out a 2019 CNN “She Filmed Sharks for Jaws. . .” article about the two conservationists.

Copyright 2020 Melissa Crismon