10 minute read
Valerie Taylor
Valerie Taylor diving in freshwater in the Piccaninnie Ponds Conservation Park, South Australia, 1960s. Photographer Ron Taylor ANMM Collection Gift from Valerie Taylor through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program in memory of Ron Taylor. Reproduced courtesy Valerie Taylor
From shark hunter to protector
Valerie Taylor AM (born 1935) has long been one of Australia’s leading figures in ocean conservation. Less well known, however, is that Ms Taylor started her underwater life as a spear-fishing champion and shark hunter in the 1950s. With her late husband Ron (1934–2012) she pioneered underwater photography and cinematography in Australia, and put down her spear to become a passionate advocate for ocean conservation. Daina Fletcher and Cay-Leigh Bartnicke plumb the depths of more than half a century to recount the achievements of this amazing woman.
VALERIE AND RON TAYLOR became household names when they introduced the underwater world to Australians through the cinema newsreel, Movietone News, and then in the new medium of television. They became two of the world’s top shark specialists – Ron, the can-do action-man cinematographer who designed early underwater housings for camera equipment, and Valerie his bold, beautiful photographer partner. Together, they swam among sharks, filming them at breathtakingly close quarters. Shark Hunter, the couple’s first underwater documentary, made with Ben Cropp, was sold internationally in 1963. Slaughter at Saumarez and Revenge of a Shark Victim followed in 1964 and 1965. The Taylors quickly gained a reputation for fearless, cutting-edge underwater photography and for their deep practical understanding of shark behaviours. They made the Barrier Reef TV series and Taylors’ Inner Space, featuring their encounters with the marine life of the east coast of Australia and the western Pacific.
In 1967, the Taylors travelled the Great Barrier Reef with a Belgian scientific exhibition on a full-length survey of the reef, led by expedition sponsor the University of Liege. Some of the footage was used in director Pierre Levie’s 1969 film La grande Barriere de Corail. That seven-month voyage changed their attitude to the underwater world, and Ron and Valerie shifted focus from spear-fishing to shark conservation. As the couple’s expertise grew, international film contracts followed. They filmed Blue Water, White Death in 1971 and then Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood blockbuster Jaws in 1975. They filmed the shark scenes with the great white sharks of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf and advised on the double-scale mechanical-shark scenes. While the Taylors saw the film and its super-sized shark as a mythological story, equivalent to King Kong and its huge gorilla, the viewing public was largely terrorised.
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To dispel fear and to prevent the indiscriminate slaughter of sharks that followed the film, the Spielberg studio sent Ron and Valerie on an American media tour, when they worked tirelessly to increase awareness, protect swimmers and divers, and save threatened species. They developed a stainless steel chain-mail diving suit and partnered with research organisations to experiment with shark repellent and various shark-protection devices, including banded sea snake patterned suits and electronic pods. Over the years the Taylors’ research into shark behaviour and their vocal defence of sharks and the marine environment resulted in the protection of grey nurse and great white sharks in Australian waters. Valerie’s expertise across marine species was soon valued beyond her popular audience. In the 1990s she was appointed to the New Wales Government Fisheries Scientific Committee, which provided advice on the listing and management of threatened species, habitats and communities. In 2012, a marine park off South Australia’s west coast was renamed the Neptune Islands Group (Ron and Valerie Taylor) Marine Park in the Taylor’s honour. The area is now a protected habitat for great white sharks, Australian sea lions, long-nosed fur seals and migratory birds. Many environmental and photography awards followed. Valerie received the prestigious American Academy of Underwater Arts & Sciences NOGI award in 1981. In 1986 she was appointed Ridder (Knight) of the Order of the Golden Ark by his Royal Highness Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and, in 1997 won the prestigious American Nature Photographer of the Year award for her picture of a boy swimming with a whale shark in Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia. In 1998 the couple’s book Blue Wilderness won the Gold Palm Award at the World Festival of Underwater Pictures and, in 2000, Ron and Valerie were inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame in the Cayman Islands. In Australia, Ron and Valerie Taylor received the Serventy Conservation Medal from the Australian Wildlife Preservation Society and the Lifetime of Conservation Medal from the Australian Geographic Society. In 2010, both Ron and Valerie were appointed Members of the Order of Australia for their work in conserving marine animals and habitats, and in 2011 they were inducted into the Australian Cinematographers Society Hall of Fame. Ron died in 2012, and Valerie continues to play an active role in marine conservation in Australia and overseas. She still dives: most recently in early 2020 in Papua New Guinea, and in Fiji where Ron and Valerie had worked with the local community to recreate a shark habitat as a marine reserve.
Earlier this year Valerie, aged 85, found her life and legacy featured through a different lens in director Sally Aitken’s biopic entitled Playing with Sharks: the Valerie Taylor Story, produced by WildBear Entertainment. The award-winning film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and also headlined the Gold Coast Film Festival. As award-winning natural history producer Bettina Dalton says, ‘What Jane Goodall is to chimps, or Steve Irwin is to crocs, Valerie is to sharks’.
01 A pair of harlequin shrimp tucking a starfish leg into their home, a bowl-shaped sponge, Tulamben Bali 2012. Photographer Valerie Taylor 02 In 1997 Valerie won the American Nature Photographer of the Year for this photograph of A whale shark swimming with a boy in Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia. Photographer Valerie Taylor
01 Ron and Valerie Taylor with the tools of their trade at Seal Rocks, New South Wales, 1950s. The couple gave up spearfishing in the 1960s but carried a spear gun in case they encountered sharks. Photographer Mark Heighes 02 Close-up of the central mouth of a holothurian with one of its arms inserted into the mouth being sucked clean of plankton, Komodo, Indonesia, 1974. Photographer Valerie Taylor
Ron, the can-do action-man cinematographer … and Valerie his bold, beautiful photographer partner
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Valerie Taylor’s life has been lived literally immersed in the world’s oceans. Her personal journey and career arc from shark hunter to protector is an inspiration, and a call to action for many. The museum has enjoyed a long association with Valerie Taylor AM and sees her as a national icon of ocean conservation, personifying the museum’s vision to advocate the importance and sustainability of the world’s oceans by communicating ocean literacy. In 2007, Valerie and Ron generously donated a selection of their diving, photography and shark research collection to the museum. This gift included the legendary chain-mail protective suit, underwater cine and still cameras, waterproof housings, spears, shark-calling artefacts from Papua New Guinea, shark repellent devices such as the Shark Pod, as well as artefacts from their dives on the Yongala and Dunbar wrecks, deep-water rebreathing equipment, depth gauges, and awe-inspiring shark jaws. This material has tremendous interpretive potential across themes as broad as ocean sciences, art and shipwreck, and in collection areas inspired by the sea. It will elicit emotions that oscillate between wonderment, awe, fear, danger and the sublime. The artefacts have featured in many museum exhibitions, and the chainmail suit remains on display in the Lower Gallery. Most recently, Valerie Taylor donated her photographic collection of about 10,000 images. This acquisition of colour transparencies represents her life’s work, complementing the artefacts already in the National Maritime Collection. Together, they offer visitors and viewers in Australia and around the world access to, and understanding of, the ocean environment via one of Australia’s best and most enduring ocean communicators. It is especially important in this period of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. As an award-winning photographer, Valerie’s imagery is outstanding in its quality and range. She has captured a diversity of species from seaweeds and corals to sharks in habitats as diverse as the Great Barrier Reef, the Indo-Pacific and freshwater lake systems. The subjects cover natural history habitats over many decades, records of coastal communities, and craft in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Pacific. The images also cover popular culture keynotes such as the film Jaws, with its macro-mechanical great white shark paired with actual shark footage. Again, the interpretive potential is tremendous, both for the subject range generally and for the baseline data sets of imagery it offers science in charting ocean habitat change. Museum curator Cay-Leigh Bartnicke notes the scientific value of the collection:
Valerie’s photographic collection is an amazing time capsule of life in Australian and international waters. It was unusual for the average person to be able to travel as far and as widely as the Taylors did by the 1960s. Their underwater film-making career granted them access to remote islands, uncharted dive sites and spots known only to locals. Often, if they served as reliable filming locations, this meant revisiting the areas on multiple occasions. They visited places like Papua New Guinea up to five times. Valerie and her husband were also able to dive the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef during the six-month Belgian scientific expedition, seeing all the nooks and crannies of the world’s largest coral reef.
01 Valerie testing the chain-mail suit with blue sharks off the coast of California, 1980s. Photographer Ron Taylor 02 Valerie Taylor (left) met artist Marina DeBris (right) with the Foundation’s Daina Fletcher at Marina’s exhibition Beach Couture: a haute mess at the museum in March 2021. Photograph ANMM Megan Baehnisch
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While Ron built custom camera housings and was the self-taught underwater cameraman, Valerie was behind their narratives and was often the human subject. Valerie also had her own film camera, which she used to take behind-the-scenes shots of all their work. These photos capture her legacy and are what predominantly make up the museum’s collection. Valerie’s photographs record places and ecosystems that span decades, giving conservation scientists a peek into our planet’s marine history. The ramping up of climate change has had many unforeseen effects on marine populations and their habitats. Changing ecosystem compositions, population numbers and species distributions are some of the ways our marine life are being affected, and Valerie’s collection has captured a moment in time before some of these began. For locations that the Taylors visited more than once, their images give a unique insight into localised changes over time. Some shots show healthier reef beds, larger schooling populations and unusual fish that are hard to find today. These types of records are rare and conservation scientists are employing a new enthusiasm towards multidisciplinary research in finding these time capsules of our planet. The photos allow us to quantify our past and help inform management plans for our oceans’ future. Useful information has been found in museum collections, old photo albums, fishery logbooks and more. Museums hold a wealth of knowledge in their collections that is still to be tapped, including a large amount of biological data from donated samples. Valerie and Ron Taylor had a long working relationship with the Australian Museum and donated rare samples from their expeditions to extraordinary locations, including shells and fish. The museum plans to work with the University of New South Wales to publish Valerie Taylor’s imagery from specific locales as part of the citizen science project iNaturalist and to work with other researchers to assist with identification. We are also developing a web-learning program with WildBear Entertainment to create a legacy project from footage and stills to fit within the museum’s science and sustainability program. In recognition of the tremendous support Valerie Taylor AM has given the museum, and her internationally significant and enduring protection and promotion of the marine environment, our governing Council recently awarded her our well-deserved highest honour – that of Honorary Fellow.
Daina Fletcher is the museum’s ANMM Foundation Head of Acquisitions Development and Cay-Leigh Bartnicke is the Assistant Curator – Special Projects.
