Sharkwater- 'The Incovenient Truth for Shark Finning'

Shark Water by Rob Stewart

With some wonderfully shot footage, Shark Water brings us a very emotional but highly depressing view of the damage caused by the shark finning industry.

Rob Stewart, the director, appears to have devoted his life to following sharks and about spreading the story about their plight. Over 100 million sharks are butchered every year for their fins. The shear act of killing the sharks is not simply the worst part- but very often they are simply finned and tossed back into the water- what a disrespectful end for such wonderful creatures.

In this film, Rob Stewart begins by trying to dispel some of the myths that exist about sharks. He points out that there are more deaths from drinks vending machines every year than from sharks with a staggering ratio of 800:5!

A brilliant point he puts across is that this majestic creatures are an ultimate predator, which have out-survived the dinosaurs, honing their hunting skills for millions of years. If sharks really were the blood thirsty "man eaters" that people believe them to be, then there would surely be many more incidents involving sharks. Films such as Jaws and sensationalist media hype paint an ill-educated and daemonising view of them; shaking people's fear of sharks is a prime objective in getting people to stand up and begin to save them.

Rob Stewart joins up with one of the crews from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (earlier post) to tackle illegal shark fishing in Costa Rica and the Galapagos. This proves to be a highly dangerous manoeuvre, both politically and physically. Whilst breaking house arrest Stewart manages to film shark finning in Costa Rica from the Taiwanese market and uncovers the enormous power that the wealthy market exerts on the Costa Rican government. Unfortunately (and this is of course sadly true for many of the world's problems) it appears that pure human greed and vanity puts shark fins on people's plates and drives this shocking situation.

The intimate story that Stewart draws you into the film with makes you feel his pain and burning desire to simply protect sharks. Some of the images that are shown will shock and appal the viewer but the message behind them will spark many many thoughts, which hopefully will provoke people to make a difference to the benefit of sharks.

Towards the end of the film a very simplistic picture is drawn about the effect that destroying shark populations has on the environment. However I think it is an argument that really brings home the message of how a matter that appears so low on the agenda for many people and countries can have a profound effect on the largest scale.

The argument runs as follows: that if we take away sharks, then smaller fish lower down the food chain thrive and populations increase without their regular predators, therefore consuming more phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is one of the largest sinks of CO2 in the world, using atmospheric CO2 in their photosynthesis to grow. So if you reduce the amount of phytoplankton then you reduce the amount of CO2 being sucked out of the atmosphere. THe greenhouse gas effects of CO2 are fairly well known and so we see how Stewart brings us to see that killing sharks could make a significant contribution to global warming.

His argument might be a little too naive for some people but the main point one could take away from this is that even "small measures" such as shark finning have serious escalating problems further along the line.

This is something I have long worried about in terms of marine life since I think it is too difficult to survey the ecological effects on populations underwater. The protection of terrestrial based species is often brought to people's attention because we can see the problems directly however the plight of subaqua species is often neglected by the public possibly because visualising the pillaging of the seas is a lot less tangible. Films like Shark Water raise people's awareness to these issues and for this reason I think everyone should


You will come out of this film feeling totally shocked and probably, like me, sick to the stomach with the devastation being reeked by the shark finning fisheries but it is without doubt a brilliant film with a story that will hopefully help bring about an end to the ridiculous act of shark finning.




There are a number of different organisations set up to stop the plight of shark

Please visit:

http://bite-back.com/

and

http://www.sharktrust.org/

to find out how we can all help protect one of the ocean's many integral parts to maintain the balance which has existed for millennia.

Go and see Shark Water and take as many friends with you as you can. Hear is the trailer: