Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 6 March 1963, page 22


I SHARK HUNTERS?

. No city in Australia is more shark-conscious than Sydney, with its scallops of beaches and

deep harbor reaches.

ALMOST every year a

summer day is blighted with the chilling

news of a fatal shark attack on a swimmer.

Few documentaries have caused as much in-terest as "Shark Hunters!"-an hour film telecast recently by Syd-ney's Channel 9.

"Shark Hunters !" makes you wonder why there aren't more fatal attacks. The number of

maneating sharks about seems to be prodigious.

It was filmed mainlyunderwater at Tweed Heads, the Great Barrier Reef, and southern N.S.W. by two young Australians, Ben Cropp, 27, -and Ron Taylor, 28, both of whom are mem-bers of the Shark Research

Society of Australia.

A risky ¡ob

Taylor is the present Aus-tralian Spearfishing Cham-

pion and Cropp held the same title in 1961. Filming "Shark Hunters!" involved incredible risks.

Sometimes the men had to resort to the risky business of deliberately spearing smaller

fish to attract sharks so that

they could get the pictures they wanted.

The climax of "Shark Hunters!" is an underwater experiment in which Taylor and Cropp work with a Syd-ney doctor, Dr. Shane Wat-son, in experiments to dis-cover a quick-killing shark poison.

Dr. Watson is another member of the Shark Re-

search Society of Australia and the successful experi-ments were undertaken only after months of work.

So great was public in-

terest in this TV document-

ary that Channel 9 is re-peating it on Sunday, March 3. at 3 p.m.

No one should miss it. It is both full of menace and

amazing underwater beauty.

BEN CROPP brings a shark to the surface, underwater off Brush

speared 7ft. grey nurse This picture was taken Island, southern NSW.

LEOPARD SHARK is captured by C app. In "Shark Hunters!" Cropp gets among a school of leopaii

sharks and actually rides on heh bocks.

VENOMOUS sea ser-pent in an under-water garden at Swain Reefs off Rockhamp-ton, Queensland.

DRUGGED MAmi^'tl

brings 7ft. whaler shotk \

surface after he W «gj fully injected it *i»> f*5"