- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday May 16 2008 16:25 BST
Not just another film about sharks looking beautiful and deadly, Sharkwater is a kind of Inconvenient Truth about a species in danger of reaching its own tipping point. Impassioned director and star Rob Stewart has all the stats - sharks kill five people a year compared to 100 by elephants; shark's fin soup is a $2bn a year industry, with only drugs rivalling it for Far East profit although, this film claims, the fin itself is essentially tasteless; the shark population has declined by 90%.
It's hard to find much fault with his premise, and Shepherd is not just a theorist. He is seen stroking sharks as well as swimming with them, as if they were just dolphins with a few more teeth and he's a fully engaged activist who travels to the Galapagos, Guatemala and Costa Rica to examine the difficulties of law enforcement in international waters and the legality or otherwise of fearsome long-line fishing. Essentially, this means fisherman can leave baited lines miles long and catch many sea creatures they don't want to along with those they do; many die a painful death tangled up in the nets and there's horrible footage of men on fishing boats hacking fins off sharks and dumping the mutilated animals overboard.
Shepherd takes part in a Greenpeace-style battle against an illegal fishing boat - the bizarre result is that the pursuing crew is arrested for attempted murder. The film is part of a sea change in attitudes to sharks akin to that of whales 50 years ago and includes heartening protests against shark-fishing in Costa Rica. The fish are vital to an eco-system we tamper with at our peril, and despite Shepherd's rather dull voiceover, this is a hard-hitting reminder of one more careless human action we urgently need to change.
