Ron & Valerie Taylor - History

History

• 1962: Ron's first major underwater film production,:) Shark Hunters, made with diving and business partner Ben Cropp was 16 mm black/white, and was sold to Australian television.
• 1963: Shark Hunters was sold to American television.
• 1965: Ron won the World Spearfishing Championship in Tahiti, after winning the Australian championship for four years in succession.
• 1967:
  • Ron first devised an idea of a diver wearing a full length chain-mail suit over a wet suit as possible protection against shark bite. It was more than a decade before the suit was made and tested.
  • The Taylors were employed by the Belgian Scientific Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef as advisors and 35 mm underwater cinematographers, for six months, the first major educational project of this type on the Great Barrier Reef.
• 1969: Ron Taylor co-filmed, Blue Water, White Death which was released worldwide.
• 1974: The Taylors, assisted by Rodney Fox above water, filmed the short live shark underwater sequences for Jaws.
• 1979: The suit of chain mail was made which Valerie tested with sharks, when it was found the suit was too small for Ron.
• 1979: The Taylors filmed all of the underwater scenes with the principal actors for the film, The Blue Lagoon.
• 1981: While on a dive trip the Taylors discovered mining claims on several Coral Sea Islands. They brought this to the attention of the Australian Federal Government and saved these remote bird breeding islands.
• 1982:
  • Wreck of the Yongala, a TV film, was made, showcasing what was then the most spectacular of shipwrecks in shallow water. The film was instrumental in having the wreck protected from fishing.
  • The Taylors, inspired by Cairns game fishermen lobbied, via the media, the Queensland Government and National Parks to have the potato cod of Cormorant Pass near Lizard Island protected.
  • The Taylors spent four months of 1982 in the Persian Gulf filming the underwater scenes for six educational films featuring marine life.
• 1986:
  • Valerie went to Sweden where she finalized the picture selection for a coffee table book, The Realm of the Shark, a biographical account of the Taylors' lives between the late 1950s, and the late 1980s.
  • The Taylors supplied some of their pictures to illustrate the Jacques Cousteau coffee table book entitled Great White Shark.
• 1992: January: The couple traveled to South Africa for filming on the Blue Wilderness TV series. They tested an electronic shark repelling barrier there. With George Askew and Piet van der Walt (the founders of the South African Cage Diving industry), they became the first people to film great white sharks underwater without the protection of a cage.
• 1993: Shadow over the Reef, an adventure swimming with whale sharks was filmed at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. This film was instrumental in preventing the test drilling for oil inside the Ningaloo Marine Park.
• 1997: The Taylors' documentary Shark Pod was completed. They successfully used the Protective Oceanic Device invented in South Africa by Norman Starkey of the Natal Sharks Board against great white sharks, tiger sharks, hammerhead sharks, and other shark species.
• 1999: Release of the film Shadow of the Shark, which reviews Ron and Valerie's long relationship with the sea, and particularly their and efforts to change public opinion of sharks as mindless predators. The film was directed by Tina Dalton-Hagege.
• 2008: Ron Taylor supports the Great Australian Shark Count (Australian Underwater Federation)
• 2012: Ronald Taylor dies on 9 September 2012, aged 78, following a two-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia.