Dr Geoff Taylor: The doctor who put Exmouth’s whale sharks on the map awarded Medal of the Order of Australia

The man largely responsible for Western Australia’s world-famous whale shark phenomenon has been recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to conservation and the environment. Geoff Taylor was the first person to document, study and publicise the seasonal aggregation of whale sharks along the Ningaloo coast, work that would ultimately transform Exmouth and place Ningaloo Reef firmly on the global conservation and tourism map. Since the early 1980s, Dr Taylor has studied whale sharks in the waters off WA’s North West coast, while also co-discovering the Ningaloo Current — a summer inshore countercurrent — alongside CSIRO scientist Alan Pearce. Speaking with the Times from his Busselton home, Dr Taylor said there was a time when whale sharks were not the tourism icons they are today. In fact, many West Australians didn’t even know they visited local waters. “We’d just come out from England,” he said. “I’d finished my specialist physician exams and got a job in Port Hedland, then worked for a couple of years as a medical registrar at Royal Perth Hospital. “That’s when I got into diving.” A chance conversation changed everything. Dr Taylor heard the Western Australian Museum was looking for doctors to assist on an expedition to Point Cloates at Ningaloo Station, where an unidentified shipwreck had been found. Dr Taylor volunteered as the expedition’s medical officer, travelling north with his wife, Joanna. The two weeks they spent living in shearing sheds and diving the reef left a lasting impression. “While I was there, some guys went off looking for a Japanese ship that had been wrecked in 1933 and while looking for it, they spotted a whale shark offshore and came back to the beach all excited because they’d seen a whale shark,” he said. “It just captured my imagination, because I knew that whale sharks were, at that time, thought of as being extremely rare in the world. “Jacques Cousteau, in his whole time travelling the world, and wrote the book about sharks, had only ever seen two whale sharks.” Life soon intervened. The Taylors welcomed their first daughter, and in 1982 Dr Taylor made a pivotal decision to step away from mainstream hospital medicine in Perth and move north to Exmouth. On his first day on the water, he saw two whale sharks. “It was the first of May, 1982 — almost exactly two years to the day since that sighting at Point Cloates,” he said. Whenever he could, Dr Taylor spent weekends searching for whale sharks along the west coast of Ningaloo. Sightings were initially rare — nearly a year passed before he saw another — but then something changed. “In March, suddenly we started seeing quite a few,” he said. “We saw about 12 in a week. That’s when it became obvious there was a definite season.” While whale sharks had been recorded sporadically around the world, no one had documented a clear seasonal aggregation like the one forming at Ningaloo. “By 1986 it was obvious,” he said. “They were coming in large numbers, and it happened every year.” That same year, marine biologist Chris Simpson discovered coral spawning on the reef, a revelation that helped explain the sharks’ arrival. “After the March and April full moons, the coral releases huge amounts of protein into the water,” Dr Taylor said. “It’s food for everything, including whale sharks.” Determined to prove what he was seeing, Dr Taylor began surveying the reef by boat and light aircraft. In just a few weeks, he recorded more than 150 whale shark sightings, opening an entirely new field of research. At the time, however, the idea of promoting whale sharks wasn’t universally welcomed. “I remember suggesting a whale shark on the front of a tourist brochure,” he said. “Someone from the shire said, ‘Geoffrey, we don’t want people knowing there are sharks in the water’.” Documentary makers were equally sceptical. Crews from National Geographic and Discovery Channel had failed to find whale sharks elsewhere in the world and were hesitant to invest in expensive expeditions. “I kept saying, ‘come to Exmouth at this time of year, I can guarantee you’ll see them’,” Dr Taylor said. The breakthrough came in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Charter operator Peter Ascot introduced aerial spotting flights, and in 1991 renowned marine biologist Eugenie Clark arrived with a National Geographic crew. An IMAX film followed, along with Clark’s influential National Geographic article. “By then, the news was out worldwide,” Dr Taylor said. “And the funding followed.” Today, whale shark tourism generates $20 million for Western Australia each year. “You do wonder what would have happened to Exmouth if the whale sharks hadn’t been recognised,” he said. “Or if I hadn’t stayed.” Dr Taylor said receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia had been a deeply personal honour. “I’m incredibly grateful to my family, especially my wife Joanna,” he said. “Jo has immersed herself in the marine world through her art, and we still love diving together.” Beyond whale sharks, Dr Taylor’s legacy also includes the identification of the Ningaloo Current, formally named following publication in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia in 1999. Nowadays, Dr Taylor is a retired GP and resides in Busselton, but still continues to study the whale sharks whenever he can and has documented his work through papers and two editions of his book Whale Sharks: Giants of Ningaloo Reef.