Sharkwater showing to honour filmmaker
Vancouver Islanders are getting a chance to support an international battle against harvesting shark fins by making a donation at a special Feb. 25 screening of the documentary Sharkwater.
Theatres across Canada will be showing the film to honour the work of its Canadian director and conservationist, the late Rob Stewart. The 2006 documentary highlights the world’s illegal shark trade and the damage done to populations by harvesting fins for soup.
Cineplex Events, Entertainment One, and the Stewart family are working together on this special showing.
Stewart’s body was found Feb. 3 in the waters off the Florida Keys. He had been filming underwater scenes for a sequel to be called Sharkwater Extinction.
Six years ago, after seeing Sharkwater, Margaret McCullough, a teacher at Glenlyon Norfolk Middle School, worked with MLA Andrew Weaver to bring Stewart to Victoria to speak to students there and at the University of Victoria.
McCullough and Jen Harvey launched a Victoria chapter of Fin Free. Its campaign, which included the Vancouver Animal Defence League, led to many restaurants in Victoria and on the mainland taking shark fin soup off their menus.
Sharkwater will be shown at SilverCity in Victoria, at 4:30 p.m., and Galaxy Cinemas in Nanaimo, at 4 p.m. Showings will be free of charge with a donation to World Wildlife Fund Canada in its campaign to stop overfishing of sharks.
Fin Free and other like-minded organizations are renewing efforts to see a bill introduced in Canada’s parliament that would ban imports of shark fins into Canada, McCullough said.
B.C. waters are home to 14 of the 400 species of shark known in the world.
They run from very large to the small in B.C.
The massive plankton-eating basking shark, can measure close to 12 metres and the small brown cat shark, which can reach just over 68 cm.
The Great White shark has been spotted offshore and divers and tourists will go underwater to view the more primitive sixgills at places such as Hornby Island.
Sharks are especially vulnerable to overfishing because they have a slow life history and small numbers of offspring.
About 100 million sharks are killed annually, many going to the shark-fin soup market.
Some fins will sell for $500 per pound, states the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.