Posted on January, 28 2012

Ron Taylor has not been well recently and is now very ill. The short movie Shifting Baselines that I just received this week shows how Ron, with some of the most famous "Diving Hall of Fame golden oldies" including Bob and Dinah Halstead, Stan and Suzie Waterman, Wendy Benchly, Annie Doubilet and some others is joined by some of the younger generation professionals such as Doug Seifert and George Waterman as all of them visit a marine national park in Indonesia in 2009.

This may have been the last expedition they undertook together as group of underwater filmers, photographers and passionate ocean activists, who have seen with their own eyes how the world's reefs have been destroyed and oceans are being polluted and shark and fish populations have gone down since they started their pioneer dives and photography.

Ron, throughout his career, has worked hard to show to the world the beauty of the underwater world, the interesting behaviors and individual personalities of reef fish and other marine wildlife. In this movie however, we see a different part of Ron. Here he sits in front of the camera, next to his Valerie, the famous and beautiful lady that he followed with his lens for 50 years with her pink dive suit and blond pony tail, who always speaks so clearly about her great concern for the ocean and its marine life. Now it is Ron, who in his typical quiet way, tells us how he is so worried that people today cannot experience anymore what was there before in the ocean. How we may think all is pretty and peaceful if we jump in the water today, but how he has seen it all change so drastically. How our baseline today has shifted and reflects nothing of what a healthy reef ecosystem is supposed to look like. Which is a real concern. The youngest generation of divers may be fooled to think that what they see is pristine, whereas in fact it is only a fraction of what it should be.

Ron was never the outspoken person, he was always behind the camera focusing his lens on all the underwater beauty and mystery. His work shows his love for the ocean and respect for everything in it. But with this film he also shares with us the important message that we should not forget what it really once was and therewith he makes it very clear to all of us how much work there is to be done to get it back - if we still can. The only alternative will otherwise be to watch stock footage of the people who were there in time to record it.

Watch him in this movie now and LISTEN to what he says.