Outdoor Adventure Tech

Playing with

By Robert Yehling

This is the time in her life when Valerie Taylor should be kicking back, reflecting on 70 years of dives with sharks, fish, moray eels, and other creatures of the sea. She should be playing back the countless experiences that led to more than five dozen photography and film shoots for National Geographic, Time-Life, IMAX, movies like Jaws and Jaws II, and culminating with the Disney+ epic documentary Playing With Sharks, her life story that premiered in mid-summer (and continues to stream on Disney+).

But that’s not the case. Sadly, due to a public perception that sharks are the source of a delicacy (shark fin soup), an interfering force for commercial fishermen, and deadly dangerous predators, the world’s shark population is approaching a critically low level. As much as she’d like to step back, Valerie cannot. It’s not in her nature, as her decades of establishing protected areas in her native Australia well prove. Plus, sharks have been her friends since she was a teenager. So, at age 85, she continues to voice her concerns.

“I really feel that sharks worldwide should be totally protected,” says the subject and star of Playing with Sharks. “According to what I’ve read, we have only 10 percent of the shark population that once existed. They’ve been taken mainly for their fins for shark fin soup. We don’t need shark fin soup; we need sharks. Nature put them in the ocean to do a job. They’re apex predators, top of the food chain. They keep the marine animals alive and fit by eating the diseased, sick, unwary, and stupid.”

Playing with Sharks is a 90-minute documentary masterpiece, produced by Bettina Dalton and written and directed by Sally Aikman — both keen followers of Valerie’s career since their own began. The movie combines priceless archival footage, shot primarily by Valerie’s late husband, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ron Taylor, who passed in 2012. In it, Valerie interacts with bull sharks, tiger sharks, great whites, and numerous others — often playfully. Playing games with sharks? Negotiating whether you or the shark is getting the fish you just speared? Getting rides by holding onto dorsal fins? It’s all in here.

The Taylors’ historic footage is mixed with live-action and candid and sassy voiceover, reflective of Valerie’s personality. The action includes a memorable return visit in 2020 to one of Valerie’s favorite spots in Fiji, and the remarkable relationship she’s forged with the ocean’s apex predators. In many ways, it was a reunion among old friends.

“Really early on, we filmed that scene in Fiji as our first scene, even though it’s later in the movie,” Aikman said. “On the dive boat on our return journey, we got the most extraordinary image of Valerie in repose, on the boat, looking out on the ocean. Then in the archival footage, there’s this image of Valerie in the 1960s, in Fiji, looking on the ocean in the same way. That night, on the rushes, I put up the shot of Valerie looking on the ocean alongside the archival image from the 60s. That’s when I realized there’s really something in this relationship of a life with the sharks that we can explore.”

A host of memories flooded back to Valerie during the Fiji shoot, including one of her most poignant experiences in decades of swimming with, filming, photographing, painting, and playing with sharks. To listen to her tell it, with the emotive sweep of her storyteller’s voice, is breathtaking.

“The one I’ll always remember is Nursie, who I came to know when we were working in the Coral Sea for the U.S. Navy, testing shark repellents. Along came Nursie, a very big shark, big but not dangerous… unless you put your

Sharks

Valerie Taylor began swimming with sharks as a teenager. Now, 70 years later, she reflects on her amazing journey as the world’s greatest living shark expert and protector of the species.

(Facing page) Valerie Taylor wards off an overly curious shark while wearing a chain mail suit in 1982. Top row: Valerie, in scuba gear, reading the novel Jaws on top of a shark cage; she and her husband Ron, filmed the movie’s underwater sequences. Ron and Valerie with Jaws author Peter Benchley, standing next to a set of jaws in 1971. Bottom row; Valerie, Ron and others a holding a model shark. Portrait, 1964. (Photos: Ron & Valerie Taylor)

foot in its mouth,” she chuckled. “My husband said, ‘get this thing out of here; it’s not a dangerous shark. We only want the potentially dangerous ones.’ So I put some fish on a string and swam away, and Nursie followed me. I put the fish under a dead coral. By the time I swam back to where we were working, she was with us again. I took her away again, as far as I could swim on the air I had, then swam back — and 10 minutes later, she rejoined us. After that, I’d take her out with some fish, put the fish under a cave, hold it down with coral, and she’d remove the coral and suck out the fish. Then she’d let me hold her dorsal fin as we swam back to where Ron and I were working, saving me some air.”

“The next day, when we went back to the same place, she was waiting. I got criticized for riding that shark, but by this time, we were quite friendly. I put my arm around her, pushed her around, she didn’t mind, never tried to bite. We did this for three days. Well, we came back to the spot six months later — and found she’d been taken for her fins. Every shark we worked with there was taken; one of the fishermen told us.”

For that reason, the second half of Valerie Taylor’s career has been as much about protecting sharks and all marine life as filming and photographing her underwater friends. Make no mistake, either: she has a voice as big as the world when it comes to the ocean environment and wildlife concerns. She is to the study and filming of sharks what Jacques Cousteau was to sea exploration at large, and what Jane Goodall is to the study of primates: a singular protective force that has changed everything from public awareness to perception to policy. She’s spent the past 70 years in the water studying, taking photographs, filming, swimming, and playing with sharks of numerous breeds. She also is responsible for the existence of two of Australia’s marine national preserves, one of which protects what Americans know as sandbar tiger sharks.

On the job, Valerie and Ron filmed the underwater shots for movies like Jaws and Jaws II, The Blue Lagoon, The Year of Living Dangerously, Honeymoon in Vegas, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. They also filmed two dozen documentaries in their native Australia, beginning with 1962’s Playing with Sharks (the title was reprised in an homage to Valerie) and including shows for Time-Life, as well as the 1982 IMAX movie The Great Barrier Reef. Not to mention footage on dozens of Australian TV shows.

This treasure trove of archival footage plays a big part in the 2021 version of Playing with Sharks. Aikman and producer Bettina Dalton said that more than 60 percent of the movie consists of archival footage, reflecting their desire — and Valerie’s — to show the ocean the way it once was. “To make this 90-minute movie, besides live-action with Valerie, we had about 5,000 hours of Ron’s footage at our disposal,” Aikman said. “And this wasn’t just raw footage you can race through. When he filmed, he edited daily for the rushes. Everything in there is a usable shot. Then there were thousands of Valerie’s photographs, and going through all of her journals, which date back to the 1960s.”

“In terms of the way we filmed, a lot was done by Ron historically. The way Ron filmed sharks

Valerie Taylor on the Jaws film set standing next to a shark prop in 1974. (Photo: Ron & Valerie Taylor) (Left) Valerie Taylor underwater wearing a chain mail suit in 1982. (Above) Ron Taylor filming a great white shark in 1964. Valerie Taylor underwater in a shark cage in 1968. (All photos: Ron & Valerie Taylor)

Left, Valerie Taylor underwater with camera equipment, 1970. (Photo: Ron & Valerie Taylor) Valerie Taylor framed by shark teeth, 1957. (Photo: David Mist Photography)

was never him pursuing a shark with a camera. It was always him positioning himself so that the shark glides past. That immediately conveys a sense of the benign, of sharing a world with the sharks, not ‘I’m going to show you how terrifying they are’ and throw yourself among them. There’s none of that. Ron and Valerie were really at one in the ocean with the sharks, without the rapidly beating heart of fear. When they were filming, they were at peace in their environment, and the sharks were at peace having them there,” Aikman added.

This long association with sharks paid off for the crew in 2020, as Aikman recalled. “They knew the sharks, and the sharks knew them. So when we were in Fiji in 2020, one of the sharks came playfully toward Valerie, who was trying to reach out to touch it. It gave a gentle flick of its tail, Valerie’s mask comes off, and she’s just laughing underwater… I mean, you can’t construct it or rehearse it. That’s the way it was. I think the film conveys her ease with being in their world, and we portray them not as something terrifying, but as sentient beings with every right to be there.”

How does one become so comfortable with sharks? It began with spearfishing. Valerie tells of her first encounters with sharks while spearfishing in her native New South Wales in the 1950s, again at a time when fish teemed everywhere and we were far from the need for marine national parks and preserves to protect them.

“I’m not a person who gets afraid,” she said. “If something goes wrong, I get angry, frustrated. I want to fix it. I got used to sharks when I used to spearfish. There was a time in New South Wales where, if you spearfished, it was guaranteed a shark would eventually come and want your fish. I learned very early you could keep your fish and fight the shark off, that you could look it in the eye and swim towards it. No predator expects its potential prey to swim toward it. If that didn’t work, I gave the shark the fish, and everyone was happy.”

“When I started working with sharks with Ron on film, this stood me in good stead. I knew quite a bit about the behavior of the potentially dangerous sharks.”

Likewise, Valerie does not mince words when addressing the growing incidents of shark attacks on beaches around the world. She’s just as likely to be protective of the potentially dangerous sharks as she is the humans who subject themselves to bites.

“Of course, there are potentially dangerous sharks — great whites, bulls, hammerheads. If you’re worried about them, stay onshore,” she said. “When you go into the ocean, that’s your decision. You’re deciding to go into the backyard and world of another wild animal. It’s one thing to go into the backyard of an animal on land — you can run away, climb a tree, shoot it dead to defend yourself — but in the ocean, it’s a different story. We’re very awkward, splashing around, frantic looking, even at our best. Most people bitten by sharks are bitten on the surface. The damage comes when they try to pull away and panic, and they bleed. If they got the same type of initial bite and damage from a land animal? They wouldn’t die.”

Valerie’s mountain of work and her conservation efforts have made her a major role model and influence for three generations of women and girls in Australia, not the least of which is her producer on Playing with Sharks. “I saw a NatGeo of Valerie and Ron, her in a chain mail suit and her arm in a blue shark’s mouth,” Bettina Dalton recalled. “It was an organizing moment for me and my career to see that image. She looked like a model superhero, a major influencer – I’m not the only one who had that response. And I went on to become a natural history filmmaker. About 20 years ago, I was asked by National Geographic to make a film on Ron and Valerie’s life’s work. Got to spend a lot of time with them, looking at the film archive, Ron at the lathe making his own camera housings, Valerie’s photographic and art collection, seeing her as an artist. That series went onto play on NatGeo.”

And now, they’re back together again, with a film that will let America and the Disney+ universe know what Australia and the ocean environment world have known for 60 years: Valerie Taylor is one of a kind, and the best friend the shark population has on this planet.

“I hope this film gives the general public a better understanding of not just sharks, but the marine world in general,” Valerie said. “There was so much not in the film I wanted to be there, but we had so much to work with… a lot of tough decisions to decide what stayed in. The film is a great success, but you want to see every animal that you know in there. That makes a big difference, to know them.” ■

THE MAN WHO FOUND TITANIC Bob Ballard

Explorer Talks Shipwrecks, Sea Creatures, and STEM

By Corey Noles

The man who found Titanic. That phrase may be why you began reading this story, but there is so much more to Dr. Bob Ballard than simply that single fact.

In Bob Ballard: An Explorer’s Life, he tells the tale of his life as a professor, a scientist, and, yes, an explorer. The show premieres Monday, June 14, on National Geographic. A 350-page companion book, Into the Deep, also hits shelves this week.

The Titanic discovery turned out to be a mixed bag for Ballard when he returned home in 1985. While TV appearances and interviews bombarded him immediately upon arrival, they also came at a cost. That cost is that Ballard will always be remembered as the man who found Titanic.

He’s also the man who proved plate tectonics in the 1970s and discovered hydrothermal vents as well as the man who led the first crew to the floor of the ocean. In addition, he and his crew discovered the Nazi battleship Bismarck, President John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, the USS Yorktown, USS Scorpion, USS Thresher, the site of the Battle of Guadalcanal, and countless others.

In a chat with Innovation & Tech Today, we talked about Titanic, as well as some of his other discoveries — and they’re big.

Innovation & Tech Today: Did the flood of attention that came with Titanic kind of pull attention away from some of your other projects and discoveries? Did it sour the experience for you at all?

Bob Ballard: No, no. It changed my life. And as you know, we have a companion book that’s 350 pages that goes into things deeper, called Into the Deep. Yeah, the Titanic is a mixed bag. Clearly got your attention. It does get people’s attention. In fact, when we were talking about the title for the book, they said they had to say, “The man who found the Titanic.” But in the epilogue and as you saw in the film when they interviewed my mom, she says, “Too bad he found that rusty old

(Left) Rusted bow of the R.M.S. Titanic ocean liner in the North Atlantic.

(National Geographic/ Emory Kristof) Robert Ballard in the control room of the E/V Nautilus while on the expedition in the South Pacific.

(National Geographic/ Gabriel Scarlett)

boat.” Because I am a pretty serious scientist. I’ve done a lot of major discoveries in academia. I’m a professor and I did initially, I don’t get it so much anymore. I used to catch a lot of flack from my academic colleagues: “Why are you wasting your time writing articles for National Geographic, and talk shows and blah, blah, blah.”

I have a response. I remember I was walking down the hall and one of my colleagues says, “Oh! I now know what you do. I read all about it in National Geographic magazine. And my comeback was, “Oh, I now know the journals you read. You missed the same thing in Nature and Science,” which are the top journals in the world. I’ve always known I’ve had to publish four times more academically-refereed journal articles than my colleagues because of that. And I say, “What’s your citation index number?” And that is the killing question to an academician. In other words, how often are your academic papers referenced? And I have a very high citation index record. So I had to fight that, but it’s okay. They stopped doing that because now people are insisting scientists tell them what they’re doing.

I&T Today: It looks like you’ve managed to turn your career into your hobby at the same time.

BB: I was. I think it’s because I’m dyslexic, and I had to leave the box. Because of the rules in the box, I mean school, those rules are stacked against us. So, I had to get out of the box, and it turns out that that’s what successful dyslexics do. Most self-made millionaires are dyslexic. But then there are certain fields, if you happen to go down the road in engineering, for example, at MIT, they call dyslexia the MIT disease because of the high, high percentage of dyslexic. Architecture, the arts. In my business, field geology, we’re visual creatures, so anything that takes advantage of our ability to see an image and imagine is where our strengths are. In fact, there’s a great book, The Dyslexic Advantage that explains how our brains work, and why we’re good at certain things and not good at other things. And I was lucky to have a dream, to be Captain Nemo, and to go in pursuit of that dream and succeed. So, yeah, but there’s so many that are, the majority of people in prison are dyslexics.

It’s a yin and yang, you know? And so, I’m now reaching out to dyslexics, the 20%, that’s a big number, that are considered underrepresented like any other percentage, and saying, “You know, there is a path to success. Here’s the road to go down, and don’t go down that one.” It’s something I’m doing. This late in my life it’s time to pay back for the wonderful life I’ve been able to live.

I&T Today: That’s awesome. You’ve done so many things in your life. Is there anything that stood out as a moment that you felt should have been a bigger deal than the attention it got?

BB: Thirteen-foot-long worms with humanlike blood that ingest poisonous gas, and replicate photosynthesis in the dark, and tell us there’s life throughout the universe, and even within our own solar system. I would say that trumps the Titanic big time.

I&T Today: That’s like running into H.P. Lovecraft out in the ocean somewhere. When I was listening to you tell that story, I kept flashing back to his old novels. Sea monsters and all this stuff that no one had ever seen before.

BB: Can you imagine a worm that’s 13 feet tall, has human-like blood, sticks out its lung and inhales poisonous gas? Out went the biology book on that one.

I&T Today: That’s one of the most terrifying things on Earth.

BB: Well, it was pretty, I wouldn’t say it was terrifying because I like fishing. Can you imagine the fish you can catch with a 13-foot worm? My gosh.

It was so funny when we brought up the first worm, there weren’t any biologists because no one expected it. And I called back to Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution] to get some biologists.

They said, “Put it in formaldehyde.” I said, “We’re geologists. We don’t have any formaldehyde.” And they said, “Well, what do you got?” And I said, “We got bourbon, scotch.” They said “Great. Put it in whiskey!”

So when I went around and collected, because I was chief scientist. I went around and had to collect because it’s supposed to be a dry ship and everyone had it in their stash, and he says, “I’ll help you with this, but just don’t bring up another one.”

I&T Today: What was it like that first time you saw the ocean floor when you came across all of these things?

BB: It was really, as you saw in the movie, and you’ll certainly read in the book, Into the Deep, it was seeing the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I mean, I didn’t read the book because I’m dyslexic, so the last thing I’m going to do is pick up a book. Now I get them in audio, and now they have them in a dyslexic font which helps a lot. But it was seeing the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and when Kirk Douglas got aboard of the Nautilus and is sitting there. There’s no one on the Nautilus, and he goes down to Captain Nemo’s quarters. He hits the button, and that window opens like the iris of a lens. He saw Nemo and his team walking on the bottom of the ocean. They had the big lead foot, big helmets, and they were…

Can you imagine a kid that’s only looked at the ocean like this and you see someone walking? I got fixated. Do you know how kids can just get fixated on something? And I said, “The ocean has a bottom!” And not only does it have a bottom, but it also has the largest mountain ranges. It has tens of thousands of volcanoes. I mean, we have canyons in the ocean that make the Grand Canyon look like a ditch. I went down one continuous wall off the Cayman Islands — a 20,000-foot wall. Find one of those on land! A shear wall, 20,000 feet tall.

I&T Today: My gosh.

BB: That’s the bottom of the ocean. Like heck, it’s the bottom of the ocean. I just got fixated on wandering around down there. And with a dyslexic mind, I can see in the dark. I can image and take in all the sensor systems. So, I’m very comfortable.

But we’re scientists that are all over because we don’t know what we’re going to find. So we have what’s called doctors on call, like a hospital. You don’t know what the ambulance is going to deliver. So when we make a discovery, I’ll call you. And I’ll call you when you’re in bed and I’ll boot up your laptop and stream it on your laptop, patch you into the pilot. We’ll have a conversation and you’re in bed. We say one-way video. But anyway. And then you decide whether to get out of bed and run to one of these things. So, that’s where we are now. It’s all robotics.

(Top) View of the propeller of the R.M.S. Titanic from the Mir submersible porthole. View through a porthole of the submersible Alvin exploring seafloor.

(Photos National Geographic/Emory Kristof)

I&T Today: Wow! That is amazing. You’ve been doing this for a long time now. How has it been to watch and influence the major technological changes that have come along the way?

BB: The Geographic and Titanic. The fact that I’m the guy that found the Titanic, and that I’m associated with the best storytelling organization on the planet with National Geographic, whether it’s books, televisions, magazines, you name it — is they made me who I am because I enjoy communicating. I enjoy sharing. I’m a hopeless sharer of things. My

Another view of the rusted bow section of the R.M.S. Titanic ocean liner in the North Atlantic. (National

Geographic/Emory Kristof)

mother would never look in my pockets when I came back from a walkabout because there was probably a lizard in there or some snake. I always would come home with things in my pocket, and she did not want to put her hands in my pocket. Because I’m just a sharer and I enjoy exciting people. I enjoy letting people know. It’s an epic journey that we talk about. You dream, you prepare yourself, you go forth on your journey. You overcome obstacles, you gain truth and you come back and share the truth. It releases you to go on your next journey. And like I say, my spiritual guru is Joseph Campbell, who said, “Life is the act of becoming. You never arrive.” So, I’m constantly becoming, until I’m not.

I&T Today: Until you’re not. You’ve been, it looks like, from the video especially, a real champion for the STEM subjects and helping get youth interested again. What do you think is the issue there?

BB: It’s fun. I think the key is that kids have got to understand I’m living my dream. I honestly feel like I’ve never worked. I’ve always done what I love, but I had a passion. And the kids say, “Well, what should I do?” And I say, “Follow your passion,” It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter what mountain you climb in life. It’s the act of climbing. But here’s the point. When you fall down, you won’t get up unless you want to get up. So don’t follow your parents’ “I want you to be a doctor. I want you to…” To heck with them, okay. You’ve got to follow your passion and you shouldn’t let anyone talk you out of it, because it’s the energy you need to keep you going. Because you’re going to fail. Failure is the greatest teacher you’ll ever meet, but you have to pick yourself up. And if you don’t want to get up, you won’t get up.

I&T Today: That’s right. That’s right. One other thing that stood out to me in the film, was watching you go down in the Ben Franklin. That was, as a guy who’s a little claustrophobic, I was like, this is wild. To think five days in that little capsule.

BB: Actually, the Ben Franklin itself was like, it was like 40 feet long. It was the biggest submarine I’ve ever been in, until I went into a nuclear submarine. It had bunks. The guy that built it, Piccard, was 6’5″ so the bunks were like seven feet long. They had a porthole. We had a shower so that spoiled me. Because that was my first dive and then the next one I’m in is boom, I’m in this little capsule. Now, I love the Ben Franklin. It was when I went down in a bathysphere at 20,000 feet and crashed. I think my combat training as an infantry officer, when the bullets are flying the last thing you do is run and scream. You have to contain it. And how do you contain fear, control fear, and not panic? Because in my business, if you can’t control panic, you’re dead. Same with diving. When you’re diving in scuba and going to great depths and there’s a problem, you’ve got to lock on and stay calm. fan and things really go bad, you never know how other people are going to react. The person you thought was going to be cool, panics. And this person over here that you thought might panic, is solid as a rock. I love those moments quite honestly, as long as no one dies. Knock on wood. Good to go so far. I love moments when we test a person’s mettle. And I’m always surprised at who stands strong. Commonly, are the ones you thought wouldn’t, that do, and it’s really nice. And when things go bad, I sort of see the world slow down. It’s like everyone’s moving. And I get very calm and I’m looking around a lot, and I actually crave those moments. They’re pretty amazing.

I&T Today: Well, that’s where you learn a lot about yourself, as much as anything, too.

BB: Absolutely. And you know, it does help to have done a lot. Plus, and for some reason, I have an iron stomach when it comes to going on a ship. As long as you don’t release diesel fumes around the air zone. But I always sort of looked at rocking and rolling on a ship is as like a ferris wheel or something. And yeah, I feel sorry for people that have chronic seasickness. But now you don’t even have to go to sea anymore, you can use robots now, and you’ll never get seasick.

I&T Today: Oh, I bet it has. So what’s the future looking like? Still going strong?

BB: Oh yeah. One of the reasons for wrapping this whole thing up was so the next one can get moving. We have just been commissioned, this is pretty cool, by our government to mount the second Lewis and Clark expedition. Most people don’t know that 50% of America, half our nation is underwater, and we have better maps of Mars than half the United States. And so we’re literally doing what Lewis and Clark did when Jefferson doubled the size of the United States. When Reagan signed the law of the sea, he doubled the size of America, and yet we need to find out what we own. So, I put together a tremendous dream team of explorers and we won this big competition for $100 million dollars over five years, and then renewed for another $100 million to map and characterize America’s underwater land.

We’re not calling it the Lewis and Clark Expedition, because 50% of my team are women in leadership positions. In fact, most of the top leadership of my organization are women, so we’re calling it the Lois and Clark expedition. ■

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