DN:FILM Sharkwater Extinction

Sharks are dreaded, misunderstood, loathed. They are also, evidently, delicious. That ominous triangle knifing the water’s surface is more than an emblem of terror—it’s a top-dollar delicacy in the form of shark fin soup. China slurps it up profusely, creating a punishing demand for fins of the endangered creature that Rob Stewart, the filmmaker and ocean conservationist behind the enlightening, worrisome doc SHARKWATER EXTINCTION, calls “the most important predator the planet has.”

Via crystalline, otherworldly underwater photography we watch the sinuous alpha predators, which, Stewart says, are gentle, mostly innocuous fish whose populations are being decimated. Though shark-finning is now banned in much of the world, he estimates some 150 million sharks a year are still being slaughtered. Much of this is from finning, in which sharks are caught, all of their fins sliced off, then dumped back into the sea for an agonizing death.

Stewart, a stoic 37-year-old, films a small team of shark activists in stealth action: spying on illicit fin industries, shooting undercover footage, and playing footsies with black market figures. The tension is never more than modest, but scenes of suffering sea animals are wrenching. Worst is the doc’s last 10 minutes, when Stewart makes his final dive and goes missing in the Florida Keys before being found dead from acute hypoxia caused by a lack of oxygen in his scuba tank. It, with the fate of the sharks, strikes a note of almost unbearable poignancy.