Ocean changemakers

When Valerie Taylor was younger, she was a champion spearfisher, sent by the St George’s Spearfishing Club to represent the sport around the nation. But when she and her husband Ron Taylor realised the devastation wrought by unregulated fishing, they put down their spears and picked up cameras instead. Valerie’s war chest for conservation action is to take the pictures, get her story straight, and use her voice to speak loudly for action. 

A few of the highlights from her conservation career include:

• Successfully advocated for a ban on taking fish and crayfish while on SCUBA. 
• Ensured protection of the potato cod habitat at Cod Hole, near Lizard Island, after watching them shot for fun—first gazetted protection of a portion of the Great Barrier Reef. 
• Her observations of population decline in sea lions at Dangerous Reef (they were being slaughtered as pests and bait) helped ensure protection of sea lions in South Australia. 
• Wrote letters and sent film to NSW Fisheries to make the grey nurse shark the first protected shark in the world, as declared by the NSW Government in 1984. 
• Demonstrating that seabirds nested on particular Coral Sea islands year-round, which halted the local guano mining industry and protected the breeding islands. 
• Raising awareness of the great white shark as more than just JAWS. 

In 2012, the Neptune Islands Group (Ron and Valerie Taylor) Marine Park was adopted to recognise their contribution to marine conservation.

Valerie is still going. She is now partnered with WildBear Entertainment on the major impact campaign ‘String of Pearls’.  This uses outreach and engagement with First Nations, community science, and marine tourism with the aim to have a string of no take zones established from the NSW South Coast to Southeastern QLD. This will protect grey nurse shark aggregation sites. 

Valerie Taylor, AM, is a changemaker. Not only for the ocean, but in herself. She is an example of the capacity for change that each one of us has. This is why she is the first feature in our Ocean Changemakers series, and the star of the Museum’s Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life exhibition. 

Everyone has the capacity to make a change for our ocean. We asked visitors to the Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition to answer the questions #how the ocean has changed you? and #what would you change for the ocean? So far, we’ve collected over 8,500 responses, which are being assessed as part of a national ocean literacy research project and will help the Museum to shape future programming. Thank you!