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
Canadian-born director Rob Stewart has been winning praises for his critically acclaimed movie Sharkwater for quite some time, and now has another award to add to his collection. Joining past recipients such as Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, Stewart received an award for Environmental Vision at the 35th Annual Vision Awards in Los Angeles. The Vision Awards recognize members of the Hollywood creative community – producers, directors, actors, musicians, and sportscasters – who have used their “sight, foresight and insight” to create projects which bring special enjoyment and/or educational value to audiences around the world. Sharkwater explores historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks, debunking myths and revealing truths. Not just about sharks – the film is filled with corruption, espionage, attempted murder charges and mafia rings, forcing Stewart and his crew to not just stay behind the camera, but move in front of it.
Having enjoyed a successful theatrical run and DVD release, Sharkwater is now available for a limited time only on Pay-Per-View. For High Definition, check Channel 833 and for Standard format, it can be seen on Channel 377. The times are as follows: Friday August 1 - 7 p.m. ET; Saturday August 2 - 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET; and Sunday, August 3 - 3 p.m. and 7 p.m ET.
The groundbreaking film Sharkwater has been garnering worldwide praises for its portrayal of the ecologically crucial, but highly endangered, shark. Most recently, the film won Outstanding Documentary at the 22nd annual Genesis Awards, produced by The Humane Society of the United States and held in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The event, hosted by actor Bill Maher, honors those within the media who have raised awareness for animal rights. As Sharkwater’s executive producer, narrator, writer and director, Rob Stewart accepted the coveted award for his debut documentary. “Sharks are being killed everywhere and people have no idea, largely because everyone’s afraid of sharks, so I figured if I could give people a new impression of sharks to counter to Jaws, counter to the media’s perception that they’re mindless predators, then maybe they’d want to fight for their protection like they fight for elephants, and pandas, and bears.”
Hey everyone - Sharkwater is finally out on DVD and Blue Ray with tons of special features! Please support the cause, get the dvd, show it to people, and help us push the movement to save the oceans. We don’t need to hug trees anymore, we need a revolution, and that necessitates your help.
Dear Rob,
I hope you’re doing fine and everything is great in L.A.
I have some questions from a journalists of ivy online magazine www.ivyworld.de (their motto: “for a better world”). Can you please answer them (or some of them) and send it back to me?
1. How long did it take to produce Sharkwater?
- 5 years and 15 countries.
2. First you wanted to shoot a film just about sharks. That changed why?
When I started out making Sharkwater, it was supposed to be a beautiful underwater movie about sharks, giving people the reality: the anti-jaws that brings people closer to sharks than ever before.
I figured if I could make a film that gave people a new view of sharks, counter to Jaws, then perhaps they’d want to fight for their protection as they would for pandas, elephants and bears.
As you see in the film, everything changed dramatically when we started filming ourselves to keep ourselves out of prison, and the movie evolved into a much larger movie full of corruption, espionage, attempted murder, hospitalizations, mafia and machine guns…
The film grew greatly into a new breed of film, blending a true-life action with a shark film about the survival of humans as a species.
3. Describe the ups and downs of making the film.
The creation of Sharkwater was a series of worst case scenarios. The lowest low was when I was hospitalized for flesh eating disease. The doctors were talking about removing my leg, and we were 3 weeks into shooting a shark film and had no shark footage. Everyone told me I should return home for proper medical care. My girlfriend and parents were upset, my crew was freaking… I had to turn into captain positive to keep people from flying me home… If I went home, the film would have never been finished because it was such a colossal failure that it would have been shelved. The expensive cameras would have been returned to the rental houses, and once freed from the hospital, I wouldn’t have been able to return to South America to film because of the huge financial hole that I was in. This was my one shot at making a difference and my first foray into filmmaking. I couldn’t accept that my effort to make a difference and to get into filmmaking was a failure.
The film also had a huge potential to do good…. To change the way people view sharks so they would fight for their protection, ultimately saving the oceans and humanity from destroying the ecosystems upon which they depend. Knowing this, there was no way I could give up.
Another hugely difficult part of the 5 years and 15 countries that it took to create Sharkwater was convincing people to believe in me, and the project. I started Sharkwater when I was 22 years old. I had no film experience, I’d never shot a video camera, and I had no film allies. I was a total long shot. When I came back from the initial shoot where I tried to make a beautiful underwater shark film, I had no underwater footage, but I had corruption, espionage, mafia chases, machine guns, and hospitalizations. I was also $300,000 in debt. I went to every relevant film festival to pitch the film and gain support to finish Sharkwater. I also had Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus, and Tuberculosis. After a year of this painful process, I was turned down by every broadcaster and distributor. I actually gave up on Sharkwater, and went to shoot a starfish movie for a friend of mine in Australia. Only after I’d been shooting in Australia for a year, having time to heal, reflect and shoot more footage did I realize that I had the missing pieces to Sharkwater. These supposed failures turned Sharkwater into something much greater than it would have been if I succeeded in getting the film on TV a year earlier.
4. Have your life been in danger while shooting the film? Why?
A half dozen times. We were shot at, chased by the mafia, I almost lost my leg to flesh eating disease, I had dengue fever, west Nile virus, and tuberculosis all at the same time. I was also lost, floating in the Pacific ocean for half a day when I surfaced from a dive 2 kilometers from my boat.
Everything going catastrophically wrong during shooting turned out to be a beautiful thing, as all the events became part of the movie. They gave Sharkwater what documentaries so often lack – a story, and a personal narrative. Doc’s often feel like taking medicine… you know you’re in for an ordeal that’s not necessarily pleasant… Its easier for people to come onto the crazy journey of the long shot – the 22 year old kid who’s trying to make a shark film – and come out the other side armed with the info necessary for the world to change.
5. Describe your relationship with Paul Watson.
Paul has become a close friend and ally. There aren’t many people working for the preservation of the oceans, particularly ones that put their life on the line for it. Paul is a hero, and I’m sure we’ll continue to work together.
6. What kind of person is he?
Paul is an eco hero. He’s the most outspoken and radical warrior in the most important battle humans have ever faced. He moves forward unshakably, and will be thought of as a revolutionary for centuries.
7. Your main message is that sharks are shy creatures. How is it that other documentaries capture such savage footage of them?
Every time you see a shark cage on TV, there is someone outside of the cage filming the cage. Shark documentaries mostly misrepresent sharks, making audiences think that they attack every camera, boat and cage in the water. People drag large pieces of fish or bait through the water, just in front of the shark, getting the shark to bite at the bait, eventually bringing the shark close to the camera to get dramatic footage. This is the standard for shark documentaries, and it’s atrocious. We spent 200 days a year outside of cages filming Sharkwater without a problem.
8. How hopeful are you that people will stop killing sharks for their fins?
More than 75% of the people surveyed on the ground in China don’t know that shark fin soup has shark in it because the translation literally means fish wing soup. I believe enough in the compassion of people towards species and future generations of people that awareness will create a huge change.
People can’t see what happens in the oceans, so what is out of sight is out of mind. We waste 54 billion pounds of fish each year while 8 million people die of starvation. 90% of all large predators in the ocean are gone and every fishery will have entirely collapsed by 2048. If the public knew that we depend on the oceans for survival, yet we’re destroying them every day in unprecedented ways, they would take a stand, just as they spoke out for whales and for holes in the ozone layer.
8. Are the sharks still alive when they got cut? And even when they were thrown back into water?
Some sharks are still alive when they are finned. These finned sharks can take days to die when thrown back into the ocean. Finning is a horrible practice that wastes 95% of the animal. It’s like killing an elephant for ivory or a rhino for its horns.
10. If there wouldnt’t be any sharks no more. What kind of consequences would that bring for the oceans?
Sharks sit atop oceanic food chains, controlling the populations of animals below them as they have for over 400 million years. Life on earth depends on life in the sea, which sits below sharks in the food chain. Phytoplankton (tiny plants) are the greatest consumer of carbon dioxide (global warming gas) on earth, turning it into oxygen, providing us with 70% of the oxygen we breathe. Removing sharks is cutting off the head of the most important ecosystem for our own survival. The biggest issue in any global warming debate is life in the oceans that allows life on land to exist, yet it’s never spoken of… all we hear about is industry and carbon footprints.
We know relatively little about the removal of large predators from ecosystems as we’ve traditionally eaten animals at lower levels - the herbivores.
One example is the sea otter, which was hunted virtually to extinction off the west coast of North America for the fur trade. The otter’s food population, sea urchins, exploded in numbers. Those urchins ate all the Pacific kelp (huge seaweed that form an underwater forest). Without the kelp, the Pacific herring (sardine like fish) had no breeding grounds, and without the herring, there were no sharks, sea lions, salmon, tuna, dolphins or whales. The ecosystems collapsed all from removing the sea otter, which as a species has only been shaping ecosystems for 7 million years.
What we’re doing with sharks is removing an animal that has been sitting atop of oceanic ecosystems for over 400 million years, and the ecosystems that will be affected include our own – the very air that we breathe.
So, the worst-case scenario – we cause catastrophic consequences through ecosystems that result in a great number of species’ extinction, including our own.
Best regards,
Rob