I rarely watch the tv program - This is your life - but last week, due to
the promotional hints that the recipient was known overseas as the 'shark
lady', it could not be any one other than Valerie Taylor.

Well, even I learnt something new bout her ... that she was originally
from NZ.  Glad in her usual pink dive gear (MTW's favourite colour ;-))
she was being interviewed uw in Strike's neck of the woods .. at the Manly
Aquarium. Naturally the topic was on sharks... John Nitrox's favrite
seacritter :-)  It was when that dive was over and she was exiting the
water that Mike Munroe and camera crew sprung her.

Considering she's now 78 she still has a lot of get-up-&-go.  While she
was on the dark side at first - heavily involved in spearfishing
competitions where they wiped out all the breeding stock in one weekend on
a particular reef system - she eventually saw the light.  She even
recalled the moment, which was not long after she had been awareded female
spearfishing champion for the 4th year in a row.  Tossing out the speargun
she turned her talents to uw photography and blossomed from there on.

They showed footage from her involvement with the movie Jaws, the Blue
Lagoon movie with Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkin (the later flew
over to appear on the show in person), testing the shark pod off Sth
Africa, experimenting with the chain-metal suit, the various awards she
has won around the world for her overseas conservation efforts, her local
support for the grey nurse shark and white pointer causes. People power
finally saw to it that both were put on our endangered species list.
Viv