Valerie Taylor

Valerie May Taylor AM (born 9 November 1935) is an Australian conservationist, photographer and filmmaker, and an inaugural member of the diving hall-of-fame. With her husband Ron Taylor, she made documentaries about sharks, and filmed sequences for films including Jaws (1975). Early life Born in Paddington, Sydney on 9 November 1935, Taylor spent her early years in Sydney. Her mother was a housewife and her father an engineer for Exide Batteries. The family moved to New Zealand in 1939 to set up a battery factory there, but were unable to return to Australia when WWII broke out. At 12 years of age Taylor contracted polio during the 1948 polio epidemic. Isolated from her family, friends and schooling she slowly recovered with the support of the ‘Sister Kenny Treatment and Rehabilitation Method’. Taylor fell behind in her studies and left school at 15 years of age to work for the NZ Film Unit drawing for an animation studio. Taylor returned to Sydney with her family to settle in the beach side suburb of Port Hacking where she started diving in 1956 and took up spearfishing in 1960 to provide food for the family. She became an Australian champion scuba and spearfisher and met her future husband, Ron Taylor, at the St George's Spearfishing Club. They married in December 1963. Career In 1967 a Belgian scientific expedition asked the Taylors' to join their endeavour to record life on the Great Barrier Reef. Over several months, Valerie dove the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef from Lady Elliot Island up to the Torres Strait. Taylor and her husband made documentary films about sharks, and were the first people to film great white sharks without the protection of a cage. Their work also included Blue Water, White Death in which they swam cageless among a school of oceanic white tip sharks feeding on a whale carcass. The documentary was successful, and attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg, who called on them to shoot the real great white shark sequences for Jaws.