Tampa Film Fan

film fan finding:sharkwater

“Life on land depends on life in the ocean.” — filmmaker Rob Stewart

I wrote briefly about Sharkwater a while back, but wanted to write up a complete, more “official” review. (Very belatedly, I know. My apologies.)

Photographer Rob Stewart started out making a simple movie about sharks and ended up — five years and millions of dollars later — with a moving documentary about shark preservation.

Did I just say shark preservation?  Shouldn’t we just kill all the sharks before they kill us?  Absolutely not and this film tells us why.

Sharkwater opens with crisp, lush scenes of the ocean, then a beach, where Stewart walks along the sand with the beautiful blue water as a backdrop.  Through his narration we learn of his life-long love for the water and for sharks.  “The animal we fear the most is the one we can’t live without.” He states that sharks are not like they are portrayed in the media and the film takes us on a whirlwind look of various “shark attack” news clips and videos, including part of the ominous opening scene of Jaws.

As part of his job, Stewart went to the Galapagos Islands to dive near two underwater volcanoes known for their large schools of hammerhead sharks.  He found more than he was looking for, however.  His crew discovered abandoned illegal fishing “long lines,” lengthy lines embedded with hundreds of hooks designed to capture large numbers of fish.  Stewart and his crew pulled in all the long lines and set free over a hundred sharks and other sea creatures that were still alive, and released the many that weren’t.

That discovery was the turning point for Stewart.  He left his job as a photographer to make a movie about sharks.  Despite the predatory image ingrained in us through movies and TV news, sharks only kill a few people a year.  Sharks have two senses that humans don’t have and use those senses to bypass humans and hone in on their intended prey. Stewart explains how sharks are vital to the ecosystem and how their population is being decimated, often for the Asian culinary delicacy shark fin soup. He mixes “hidden camera” footage of shark finning with interviews with various activist and ecological leaders. Stewart also provides ample gorgeous footage shot underwater and set to a beautiful soundtrack.

Stewart joins the crew of renegade activist Paul Watson’s ship and documents the activist group’s trip to Costa Rica. They confront angry fisherman, engage in physical combat with the fishing boat, sneak into a shark fin-processing plant and secretly film what they saw there, anger the Taiwanese mafia responsible for the illegal Costa Rican shark finning industry, get arrested for murder, sneak out of the country, confront the Coast Guard, and finally escape to international waters. Oh, and after all of that, Stewart is hospitalized with the flesh-eating disease and then sneaks back into Costa Rica after recovering.

Stewart’s dedication to his mission is beyond question. His filmmaking ability isn’t bad, either. Sharkwater is beautiful, moving and educational. However, I wish Stewart had inserted more data and hard facts in the film to back up the claims made onscreen. I don’t want to see graphs and slides a la An Inconvenient Truth, but I think that including some of the research that supports his assertions into the film would make Stewart’s case stronger. (I’m pleased to report that after I saw the movie, I spent a couple of hours researching Stewart’s assertions online and found supporting documentation to back up all of the statistics and claims from the film that I had jotted down in my notebook.)

Film Fan Finding: A

To learn more about sharks, Sharkwater and Stewart, visit www.savingsharks.com.