LUCID FORGE

The Canadian documentary Sharkwater has really sparked the imagination of filmgoers and has justly been rewarded with several jury prizes at film festivals across North America. In terms of business, Sharkwater opened on 25 screens nation-wide on the same weekend as heavy hitters TMNT and Shooter, and it ended up making more money per screen as the juggernaut blockbuster 300. The film's director, Rob Stewart, says the film is "a conservation story", and that the film emblemizes "the next wave" of environmental discussion, and according to Stewart the film's message seems to be clicking. He says that everyone from kids to grandparents have been stirred to action, and that includes local governments; he points to Ontario's recent decision to include conservation education into the curriculum as an example.

Perhaps another reason why people have been so attracted to Sharkwater is the story behind the story. Stewart, while filming in Ecuador, came down with a case of flesh-eating disease which developed in his leg and was not the only exotic disease that befell him over the years of making this movie. But now the filmmaker is as healthy, and as committed, as ever. He says his mission is “to make conservation cool”, and to show the kids out there that there’s “nothing more inherently cool than making the planet liveable for future generations.”

With his success assured and money men knocking at his door to fund his next project, a couple of which will be targeted towards kids and TV, Stewart answered the call from Lucid Forge to chat about his journey from wildlife photographer to fledgling filmmaker, and from wanted felon to respected documentarian.

Adam A. Donaldson: When I was watching the movie it seemed that you started out making an informational movie about sharks, but it became an advocacy film about the dangers facing sharks. What was your intent when you started filming?

Rob Stewart: When I started, I thought that I was going to be making Winged Migration, but underwater, so people could see the reality of sharks and feel closer to sharks than ever before. But through travelling and renting incredibly expensive cameras and trying to get underwater, we found that we hadn’t gotten underwater yet. But we were charged with attempted murder in Costa Rica after colliding with a fishing boat and I did end up hospitalized, so it really took a different turn as we ended up filming ourselves. By the time we ended up in Ecuador and I was in the hospital, I thought, clearly the world isn’t steering me underwater so we should start doing something with all this stuff we were shooting on land. It wasn’t until a couple of years after I shot all of that I figured out how to mold it into a cohesive story.

 

Anyone watching the film will obviously see that you’re very knowledgeable about sharks, but it seemed that even you were learning a lot during the making of the film; is that an accurate impression?

I didn’t learn more about sharks, but I learned a lot about the demand for sharks around the world and how powerful fisheries are worldwide. I didn’t expect mafia involvement and you don’t expect the trade of sharks to be worth a billion dollars. I just wanted to go out there and make a movie that would help protect sharks and my eyes were opened up to how big the industry was and how much money was behind it and how much corruption surrounds the trade of shark parts.

 

How did your love for sharks develop?

I’ve been chasing sharks since I was a kid. I learned to dive when I was 13, but I’ve been free-diving since I was six and spent time trying to get close to sharks in and around the Caribbean and Florida, catching underwater critters and that kind of thing. I got an underwater still camera when I was 13 and that changed everything, it meant I had more purpose to go underwater and that was to take pictures and bring them back to show people the beauty of the underwater world. That helped shape my relationship with sharks because I wanted people to see how beautiful they were counter to the way they’ve been commonly portrayed.

What did your parents think of chasing sharks and bringing home specimens, by the way?

They were incredibly supportive, so when I wanted to keep baby sharks in bath tubs they’d sacrifice their bath for a few days. They were wicked and I came home with all sorts of stuff – baby alligators, poisonous snakes and things, so they had to be pretty liberal to put up with me as a kid.

 

The science that the film talks about, how the removal of large predators for the food chain affects an entire eco-system, is this a relatively new area of scientific investigation?

Absolutely, for a number of reasons. First of all, the top predators haven’t traditionally been targeted in commercial fisheries; the taking of sharks didn’t get started until the 1980s. Studies from Dalhousie [University in Halifax] are some of the first research that’s not coming out after the fact, they’re doing the research while it’s going on and figuring out steps that can be taken to prevent it.

Your day job, so to speak, is wildlife photography. So what made you want to expand into filmmaking?

I was on an assignment in the Galapagos Islands, and while I was there I was photographing Hammerhead sharks. They were always my favourite species of shark and I had never photographed them before in the most protected area on the planet. Then, when I arrived on Darwin-Wolfe Island in the north, instead of finding and photographing sharks in all their majesty, I found long lines and hundreds of sharks dead and dying. It really opened my eyes, because if sharks can get killed in the most protected area on Earth, what’s going on in the rest of the world? So I started writing magazine articles and taking photo assignments that had to do with sharks and just tried to get the word out there. I realized that I need to take a stronger medium; people were reading the articles but they still viewed sharks as dangerous. I decided to make a movie so that I could get people to care about sharks and fight for their protection like they do for elephants, pandas and other endangered animals.

While making the film you suffered from all kinds of health issues, not the least of which was the flesh-eating disease, it almost seemed like this sort of Job-like struggle. Were there ever any thoughts, like maybe when you were lying in the hospital bed, of giving up?

Yeah actually, the interesting thing about editing the hospital scenes was cutting out the parts where I was laughing because it seemed so ridiculous. Here I was, trying to make an underwater movie about sharks, and two or three months into it at this point, we were arrested, charged with attempted murder, chased out of countries and then I had fleshing eating disease and they were going to cut off my leg…It just seemed crazy. At that point we were wondering what the hell we were going to do because I was a couple of hundred thousand dollars in debt by this point and I still wasn’t sure that the stuff I had shot was going to make it into the movie. My parents were telling me to go home. The people I was working with were telling me that this had been a failure. For me though, it was my first film, it was the first time I had shot a video camera. If I failed and I had only come home with a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of debt then I would have never made another film again. It was one of those things where I couldn’t give up because we really didn’t have any film, and if I went back to North America without any film, then I’d be toast.

In the interest of full disclosure, were you a big fan of Jaws as a kid?

I watched Jaws as a kid, but I wasn’t a fan of it because it made me afraid of one of the most beautiful, magnificent worlds on the planet. People who are afraid of sharks are sort of like people who are afraid of the dark: their life is limited and not as beautiful because of [the fear]. Being under the ocean is amazing, it’s like being in Alice’s Wonderland, except you can fly. The ocean is home to some of the coolest, most amazing animals, and is the greatest example of evolution’s way of creating systems and species that couldn’t exist on land. So to limit my experience of that world would be a terrible thing, and that’s what Jaws did. Jaws freaked me out for sure as kid, although it is a good movie because it did such a good job of scaring people. It’s just a shame that for the last 30 years sharks have been vilified.

 

If you’re interested in getting involved with issues surrounding shark protection and conservation, Stewart says it’s as simple as talking about it. He adds that keeping public pressure through writing letters to the government demanding a ban on the sale and trade of shark fins will help. Also, writing to the Secretary General of the UN and voicing your support for an international ban on shark finning is another good step. For more information on issues of the dangers facing sharks visit www.savingsharks.com