On March 3rd, 2009 Rob Stewart addressed over 1,000 school students in a North America wide web conference. Over 30 schools held private screenings of Rob’s award-winning film Sharkwater and spent several days engaged in numerous educational activities surrounding the movie and the conservation of the world’s oceans.

This rare opportunity brought students together from Hawaii to Ontario and allowed them to communicate directly with Rob to ask many of the burning questions they had collected after researching sharks and watching the movie. Rob did not disappoint! Not only did Rob answer the student’s questions, he inspired a generation of kids to stand up for what they believe in and guided them in how to make positive changes in their world.

Like a true hero, Rob empowered, taught and shared and made a real difference in the lives of those who he spoke with.

To see the interview click here.

This is Your Chance to Help Save Sharks!

Bring Sharkwater to China! Act Now!

Dear Friends,
It’s really important that you help us bring the award-winning documentary Sharkwater to China. China is the largest consumer and trader of shark fins in the world, fueling the growing demand for shark fin soup that is destroying our oceans within our lifetime.

Most Chinese consumers don’t know that shark fin soup contains shark, because the translation literally means “fish wing soup”. Shark populations have dropped more than 90% in 30 years, destroying the most important ecosystem for our own survival. Conservation isn’t just saving species and ecosystems, it’s saving humans.

This is a huge consumer awareness issue that we have the power to change. We urgently need your help to create a Chinese version of Sharkwater that will target an audience of over 300 million people. We can change the world, with your help.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Donate now to the non-profit foundation SAVE THE BLUE (savetheblue.org/donate) that is working with us and WildAid to bring Sharkwater to China & receive a special custom-made tribal shark pendant, shirt or bag!

Wear your special shark pendant with pride to engage people in making shark conservation an international priority!

It’s cool to save sharks!

Act now & donate to China

Thanks for helping us save sharks,

Rob Stewart and the Sharkwater Team

www.sharkwater.com

Rob Stewart, director of the award-winning film Sharkwater has been invited to participate at the inaugural Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) April 16-19, 2009!

The festival showcases cutting-edge documentaries and short films to raise awareness of current environmental issues. It also offers an opportunity for the audience to interact with the filmmakers and other experts in an intimate setting. Sharkwater screens Saturday April 18th at 7:30pm followed by a discussion with Rob Stewart. This is an amazing opportunity to not only see the film with fellow environmental enthusiasts but will provide a chance to speak with Rob about the film and what we can all do to help save sharks!

In addition to Sharkwater there are some amazing films screening - and best of all, all screenings and special events are FREE and open to the public! Bring your friends, family, colleagues and share this experience with them!

For more details on EFFY visit
http://environment.yale.edu/film/Home.html

To learn more about Rob Stewart and Sharkwater visit
www.sharkwater.com

The 16 foot long fibreglass shark that was used to promote Sharkwater at various functions, including film festivals and movie premieres, is up for auction at eBay. Rob’s willing to part with this valuable piece of movie memorabilia to order raise funds for his new film, Rise Again. Check out the shark at by clicking on this link, which will lead you straight to the auction.

Rob Stewart and the team from Sharkwater Productions are heading to Washington DC for the PowerShift ‘09 Convention February 27- March 2, 2009.

PowerShift’09 is an event that brings youth, activists and the leaders of the climate and clean energy movement together for a weekend of seminars, panels and action planning. Participants are encouraged to join workshops and panels that are designed to infuse young leaders with new skills, networking, new ideas and employment opportunities. The forum concludes with an action rally at Capitol Hill when the participants send their message to political leaders and demand immediate federal climate action. PowerShift demands that the federal government: invest in a clean energy economy, cut global warming pollution immediately, end our dependence on dirty energy, take dirty money out of politics, and re-engage as a leader in the international community.

Attending this monumental event is important to Rob as it provides key research opportunities for his next documentary Rise Again. The film explores how humans are going to survive the next 100 years and points to revolutions of the past to hopefully further the most important revolution of our time, saving humanity. Rise Again will take audiences on an incredible journey working with conservation groups to protect the planet, ecosystems, and ensure survival of our species.

For more info on Powershift ’09 please visit : http://www.powershift09.org/

Ocean Awareness Week kicks off at the University of Miami with a special screening of Sharkwater followed by a keynote address from director Rob Stewart. The event will be held on the Coral Gables campus on Monday, February 23rd with over 150 students and faculty in attendance. The event is sponsored by Rho Rho Rho, the Marine and Atmospheric Science Honor Society to promote awareness, preservation, and conservation of the Earth’s marine resources and environments.

Toronto Life March 2009 –
When power couple Galen and Alexandra Weston saw Sharkwater, Rob Stewart’s debut doc about murderous Guatemalan shark poachers and other oceanic abuses, they were moved to call the guy up and pledge their support for his cause. They even invited Stewart to dinner at the Spoke Club, where Alex revealed she had all but cut out seafood. You can imagine, then, Stewart’s shock when he discovered Real Canadian Superstores (a Loblaw chain) advertising shark’s fin soup in the days leading up to the 2009 Chinese New Year.

Stewart took swift action on his blog, advising supporters to sell their Loblaw stock and write or call CEO Galen Weston Jr. He then fired off an e-mail to the grocery titan, expressing his strenuous objection. Weston, a recent recipient of a national PR award, jumped faster than you can say “five cents a bag,” pledging to look into the matter ASAP. Stewart pushed back with a request for an exact date when he could expect the soup to be sacked. In an e-mail exchange, he insisted, “You, as CEO, should be able to remove shark’s fin soup from your stores almost immediately.” He wasn’t afraid to play hardball, either: “As you know, we have amassed quite a following in the public and press, and will be doing our best to bring this issue to light.”

Weston, for his part, saw fit to reveal a little domestic detail: “My wife still rarely eats fish because of your film… So the drum beats in my home every night.” Five days after Stewart’s first e-mail, the Asian delicacy was off the shelves. A good move, considering Loblaw has marked 2009 as a year for progress in “sourcing with integrity.”

Humane Society International is targeting Chinese restaurants in Toronto and other cities during New Year celebrations this week with its campaign against shark finning. Shark fin soup, once prized as a symbol of wealth, is a highlight at Chinese New Year festivities and major gatherings. But environmental groups say millions of sharks are dumped back into the ocean after their fins are cut off, leaving them to die a slow and painful death. Toronto filmmaker Rob Stewart, whose award-winning documentary Sharkwater chronicles the plight of the world’s sharks, said the message is slowly getting out.
Last week, food distributor Loblaws stopped selling shark fin soup at its Great Canadian Superstore outlets after a campaign by Stewart’s group Saving Sharks. - 24 Hours News Services, Thursday, January 29, 2009.

The Great Canadian Superstores (owned by Loblaws) are now selling canned shark fin soup in time for the Chinese New Year. After Sharkwater’s release in Canada, Galen Weston, the CEO of Loblaws, brought me out to dinner with his wife Alexandra, and expressed his great interest in supporting the cause…..
Selling shark fins en masse; supporting the destruction of sharks, the oceans and the ecosystems we depend on for survival is how Loblaws supports the cause. Its outrageous that its happening in our own backyard… after we already know shark populations have dropped more than 90%.
Help us fight this, and show Loblaws and Galen Weston that this was a bad decision… and lets get shark fin removed from Canadian Superstores. There’s still time to turn this around.
1. Sell your loblaws stock. Now!
2. Write letters to:
Customer_Service@loblaw.ca
service@provigo.ca
investor@loblaw.ca
shareholders@loblaw.ca
3. And call Galen Weston’s corporate office:
(416) 922-2500

Hello,

My name is Jessica. I am a Canadian Citizen living and working at a dive shop in Costa Rica. I saw your movie in Canada a couple of years ago while it was in theaters, and ever since then I have had a passion to help save the sharks, despite at the time never having seen one. Now that I work in a dive shop in Costa Rica (in Playas del Coco), I have contact with divers every single day, and I always always ask people ‘have you seen the movie Sharkwater’? I couldn’t believe how many people, divers, who have never even heard about it! These are the people we need to watch the movie! They are people who obviously care about the underwater environment, and they need to know what is happening to it. I endorse the movie every single day. I tell people ‘when you go home you have to watch this movie’. But it would be easier if I had some movies there to sell people. I don’t know if there is any way we could arrange buying a whole box of the movie so that I could tell ALL of my customers to buy it!

One day a man came into our shop just fuming mad, and he said he had went to a little fresh fish market place to buy some fish and they had at least 60 shark fins and a manta ray all chopped up. We have a huge painting on the side of our shop that says ’stop shark fining’ so as he was passing by to go to the supermarket instead to buy fish, he stopped in to tell us about it, in hopes that we would know who to report to about it. We can’t do anything to report them with out proof. so we sent two of our workers to try to get pictures of it. Unfortunately after the man had made such a big fuss about it they had put most of it away. So when our workers got there there wasn’t much to take pictures of. I share this story with you so you can see that I live first hand every day. We see fishing boats out at our dive sites sometimes catching Octopus for example; and then we see none for about a week when we normally see tons! It is just appalling what massacre goes on out there all the time, and more people need to know about it, everyone needs to know about it.
I have made everyone I know in Canada watch the movie, now I need to get all the people who dive with us watch it.

I want to do everything I can to help, please let me know if you can help me get movies sent to my shop for me to sell to all the customers, or if there is anything else I can do to help save sharks.

Best Regards,
-Jessica