Ron Taylor, the Australian marine conservationist renowned for filming underwater shark footage used in the film Jaws, has died of cancer at the age of 78, a close family friend confirmed. Taylor, who had been battling leukaemia for two years, passed away on Sunday at a Sydney hospital.
Andrew Fox, who collaborated with Taylor on shark conservation for decades, said Taylor held mixed feelings about his work on Jaws. While the 1975 blockbuster terrified beachgoers, it also drew attention to the often-threatened animals. Taylor and his wife, Valerie, spent years filming great white sharks and advocating for their protection.
The couple's close-up images of sharks caught the eye of director Steven Spielberg, who enlisted them to capture footage of a great white for the movie. They shot much of the sequence where a shark destroys a cage containing a main character, using a miniature shark-proof cage with a short diver inside to make real sharks appear as large as the mechanical one used in the film.
Fox noted that both Taylor and his father, Rodney Fox, who survived a near-fatal great white shark attack in 1963, were affected by criticism that Jaws reinforced the perception of great whites as 'death machines'. However, in later years, they realised the film sparked public interest in learning about great whites.
Taylor began his career as a spear fisherman but had a change of heart during a competition in the 1950s. He later produced documentaries such as Shark Hunters and the TV series Inner Space. In 2003, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his conservation work.
