Ever wondered what it’d be like to leave your diving cage and swim among hundreds of sharks in a feeding frenzy? Or wondered how you’d survive if your dive boat left you behind, with nothing but some hair ribbons and your smarts to keep you alive? In this episode of Wild Lives by Faunographic, Valerie Taylor’s real-life adventure tales will blow your mind. 

Still diving at 83, Valerie has spent a lifetime in the ocean. Her decades-spanning career as a film-maker and photographer alongside her partner Ron kicked off in the 1960s and, with her fearlessness around sharks and an incomparable understanding of their behaviour, Val quickly became known as the world’s most glamorous shark expert.

As the years passed, the pioneering couple continued to up the ante and soon enough Steven Spielberg asked them to film the real-life shark footage for Jaws. In the following decades, the Taylors produced countless documentaries and filmed ocean sequences for a stack of Hollywood blockbusters, while also shooting photos for the likes of National Geographic and Time Life.

Few people in the world have had the opportunity to see the world like Valerie. After all, she’s spent more than 60 years in the ocean with its incredible wildlife – and she’s got the amazing stories to prove it. In this episode of Wild Lives by Faunographic, she shares a few of her favourites.