Ron Josiah Taylor, AM (8 March 19349 September 2012) was a prominent Australian shark expert, as is his widow, Valerie Taylor. They were credited with being pioneers in several areas, including being the first people to film great white sharks without the protection of a cage. Their expertise has been called upon for films such as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates. Biography Ronald Taylor began diving in 1952 and became interested in spearfishing and underwater photography. He met Valerie while both were members of the St George Spearfishing Club in Sydney. They became champion spearfishers, but switched from killing sharks to filming them after becoming fascinated with marine life. They married in December 1963. They made their living in the 1960s by making wet suits and selling underwater cameras, plus doing artwork for magazines. Taylor won the Australian Open Spearfishing Championships for four years in succession before winning the World Spearfishing Championship in Tahiti in 1965. Taylor's first major underwater film production, The Shark Hunters (1962), was made with diving and business partner Ben Cropp. In 1964, he made the Slaughter at Saumarez, the first Australian diving adventure to the Coral Sea aboard professional fishing boat Riversong with free divers John Harding, Bob Grounds and Ron Zangari with Captain Wally Muller. In 1966, the Taylors sold their shark documentary Revenge of a Shark Victim to producer Robert Raymond who won a Logie Award for his adaptation with new footage. The Taylors were employed by the Belgian Scientific Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef as advisers and 35 mm underwater cinematographers, for six months, the first major educational project of this type on the Great Barrier Reef sponsored by University of Liège, Belgium. In 1969, Ron co-filmed Blue Water, White Death with Stan Waterman, Peter Lake and Peter Gimbel. In 1974, the Taylors, assisted by Rodney Fox (above water), filmed the live shark underwater sequences for Jaws. They also filmed the live shark underwater sequences for Jaws 2 (1978) and the shark sequences for the film Orca (1976). In 1978, they published Great Shark Stories book. Taylor first devised an idea of a diver wearing a full-length chain-mail suit over a wet suit as possible protection against shark bite in the 1960s but it was more than a decade before the suit was made and tested but it was found the suit was too small for Ron so Valerie wore it