Dr. Gregory Skomal

hat’s scarier, swimming with great white sharks or conducting the Boston Pops? Dr. Gregory Skomal Guest Conductor W

If you’re marine biologist Dr. Gregory Skomal, the answer is easy. “I feel a lot more comfortable around sharks than being up on stage,” he laughed. “I’ve been doing this shark stuff a long time. It’s my 30th anniversary with the Massachusetts Division of Marine

Fisheries this year so I’ve gotten really comfortable around them. This event is probably going to take me out of my comfort zone a little bit.”

Despite that uncertainty, this year’s guest conductor for the 32nd Annual Citizens Bank Pops by the Sea knows that like the great white sharks he studies, Cape audiences (probably) won’t harm him.

“I absolutely can’t wait,” Dr. Skomal said. “I’m deeply honored. I’m wondering what it’s going to be like to be up there with a baton in my hand, thinking,

‘Now what do I do?’”

Part of his excitement resides in the fact that this year’s Pops will pay tribute to movie composer John

Williams who wrote the score to a film that changed his life – “Jaws.” though I see the same sharks, I think to myself, ‘Wow,

“That was a film that pushed me into the water,” that is just an amazing animal. Just an absolutely he admitted. “It inspired me to be a marine scientist amazing animal.’ There is a childhood fascination I and concentrate on sharks…. The more scientists, have had with sharks that I don’t think I’ll ever shake.” marine scientists and underwater photographers I Despite being a scientist, Dr. Skomal’s work often meet, the more I realize I’m not alone. There’s a great delves into the creative as a photographer, writer, and documentary that deals with how ‘Jaws’ changed the public speaker. For him, the intersection between world and highlights people like me who were drawn science and art is much closer than you would think. to the ocean by that film.” “Science is important because it teaches us about

When it comes to great whites, there may be no ourselves and our planet,” he said. “I think art is scientist more famous than Dr. Skomal, thanks in equally important because it allows us to be creative, large part to his multiple appearances on the Discovery to educate, and to inspire. If I got up in front of an

Channel’s Shark Week. In the documentaries he has audience and my talk was purely scientific, I would lose appeared in, there is an almost childlike enthusiasm to people very quickly. But if I show them a dazzling video how he approaches his work. or a photo and get creative in my conversation, then I

“Every day I’m on the water never gets old to me,” connect with them at an emotional level. That’s what he said last month, when he and his crew had already art does – it taps into that emotional reservoir where tagged their third great white of the season. “Even you’re able to connect with people.”