The Valerie Taylor Story

There was a time when a few scuba divers were household names. Remember Blue Water, White Death, that iconic Peter Gimbel 1971 documentary shot by Stan Waterman and starring Ron and Valerie Taylor? Among divers, Valerie Taylor became one of those household names, an Australian blonde bombshell and expert diver in her trademark pink wetsuit.

She and her husband, Ron, were fascinated with sharks, and back in the day, pioneered their own underwater housings to film them up close. When she did get badly bitten once, she was more intent on getting it recorded on film than going for surgery. If you saw the footage of Valerie in her chainmail suit, encouraging a shark to bite her arm, you would never forget it. Or her cuddling a giant green moray. Sequences from their television shows regularly turn up on YouTube and the social media pages of diving groups. The couple worked together underwater until Ron's demise in 2012.

But, if you didn't see the footage, now's your chance.

Emmy-nominated director Sally Aitken has taken the enormous treasure trove of archived underwater footage of the Taylors' adventures and combined it with contemporary interviews and memorable footage of Valerie (now an octogenarian) diving with sharks in Fiji to produce a striking Nat Geo documentary: Playing with Sharks: the Valerie Taylor Story. Now on Disney. https://tinyurl.com/aeutwnc8