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Rob Stewart's documentary is no 'gasp-at-the-beauties-of-the-deep'-style Imax fodder. Though we do see sharks in all their submarine glory, the intention is to highlight their plight rather than their magnificence. Taking part in a real-life anti-sharking voyage to illustrate his argument, Stewart's point is that the shark fin industry, in its short-sighted quest for financial gain, may trigger an ecological disaster beyond the extinction of the sharks themselves. This is depressing, but important, stuff.
It's all down to the plankton factor, Stewart explains. Plankton is the world's chief producer of oxygen. Sharks eat the fish that eat plankton. So if sharks are killed off, the world's main supply of oxygen will be catastrophically depleted. Stewart fails to mention whether man over-fishes for plankton-eating creatures too, but it doesn't matter: footage of sharks having their fins sliced off while alive, then being tossed back into the sea, bodies flailing, is argument enough for the practice to be stopped. And when it transpires that shark fins have no particular taste of their own - that the Asian status-symbol soup has to be flavoured with chicken stock - the sheer absurdity of the carnage makes it even more abhorrent.
"THIS PASSIONATE FILM IS ALSO A DISPIRITING ONE"
Underwater sequences and (unattributed) statistics make up a large part of the film, so whenever Stewart returns to the anti-sharking voyage in Costa Rica, the consequent narrative rush is always welcome. Stewart's captain rams a finning vessel and attacks it with a water cannon, and he, Stewart and crew end up being arrested for attempted murder. I won't give away what happens, but the skirmish has repercussions which are in the end positive. Sadly though, this passionate film is ultimately a dispiriting one: the stats may be unattributed, but they do ring true.
Sharkwater is out in the UK on 22nd February 2008.
A grim portrait of man's destruction.
