Shark fin trade documentary honours director who died during filming
- Rob Stewart died 70 metres underwater while filming his third film Sharkwater Extinction
- The film looks at the illegal trade in shark fin and the corruption that allows it
The phrase “he died doing what he loved” could not be more apt for Canadian activist and filmmaker Rob Stewart.
Stewart was only 37 when he died on January 31, 2017, after a diving accident off the Florida Keys while shooting Sharkwater Extinction, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2006 documentary, Sharkwater, that exposed the massive global trade in illegal shark fin. In 2012, he released Revolution, a documentary that also addressed environmental issues.
His death – an autopsy found he suffered an acute case of hypoxia, or lack of oxygen – sent shock waves through the global environmental movement.
In his third film – it was completed by the Rob Stewart Foundation in collaboration with director Sturla Gunnarsson and editor Nick Hector – Stewart continues his shark fin crusade, this time looking into the political corruption behind it. Filming took him from West Africa, Spain, Panama and Costa Rica, to France and the US, where he delves into the underworld of the pirate fishing trade to expose a multibillion-dollar industry.
It also sheds light on how we are unwittingly consuming shark in mislabelled seafood and shockingly reveals how shark DNA was found in products from pet food and fertilisers to beauty care products. “We’re smearing endangered super predators on our faces without knowing it,” Stewart observes.