A real-life horror film set under the deep blue sea
Sharkwater Extinction looks at how the finning industry could wipe out a predator that was here before the dinosaurs
Sharkwater Extinction sounds like a bad deep-sea horror movie sequel. But the only part of that description that fits is that it’s a sequel.
OK, it’s also a horror movie, in that it hopes you’ll be horrified to learn what’s been happening to Earth’s top marine predator (not counting humans) since the original Sharkwater documentary came out in 2006.
Director and de facto star Rob Stewart has had a lifelong love of the beautiful creatures, which he notes have been plying the world’s oceans for 400 million years. So not only are they older than the dinosaurs, they’ve lived through four major extinction events, although as the title suggests,
SHARKWATER EXTINCTION Grade: B+ Cast: Rob Stewart, sharks Director: Rob Stewart Duration: 1h28m
the Anthropocene era could prove to be their final curtain.
Stewart’s original documentary helped create change in the finning industry, whereby millions of sharks are killed for their fins, which are then made into soup.
More than 90 countries now ban the practice. Unfortunately, this means it’s now gone underground. And since finning is outlawed but trade in fins is not, that leaves a
loophole wide enough to sail a refrigerated freighter through.
The filmmaker heads to Costa Rica, Panama, Florida and his adopted hometown of Los Angeles (he’s originally from Toronto) to document the shark trade, often playing the wide-eyed tourist to get footage.
His good looks open many
a door. And while the thousands of fins he finds are frightening — each one represents a dead shark, many of them not even of breeding age — more terrifying still is the news that shark meat is sometimes relabelled and sold to consumers as other fish.
As apex predators they also tend to be full of lead, mercury and other toxins.
Stewart works with a biologist who finds traces of shark DNA in everything from pet food to cosmetics.
Or as he memorably puts it: “We’re smearing endangered super-predators on our faces without knowing it.”
Ever the optimist, Stewart believes that, if people knew more about this, they’d work to stop it. But he must also battle the bad press that sharks receive, in part by filming himself underwater, hanging out with placid hammerheads and other shark species.
In fact, only five people worldwide were killed by sharks last year, which is fewer than elephant and tiger deaths. (Also cow and horse deaths, since we’re on the subject.)
I’ve been writing of Stewart
in the present tense, but in fact, he died in January 2017 during a dive to document deepwater sharks.
No, the sharks didn’t do him in, and neither did poachers, although he was shot at more than once; in fact, the film shows him fleeing bullets off the coast of California. Stewart was killed by lack of oxygen in a breathing apparatus he had never used before.
His passing is handled with great emotion but not exploitation by his colleagues, who stepped in to finish the film.
The sharks have lost their greatest fighter and advocate, but Stewart’s message, even had he lived, is clear: It’s up to all of us now.