The great shark hunt
Ruth Hessey chats to Rob Stewart the Sharkwater pin-up boy in Sydney to premiere his documentary
Stewart's planned nature documentary became an exposé
He's been called the Tom Cruise of marine biology, and derided for his topless diving and Ocean Boy voice-over, but there is no disputing Rob Stewart's commitment to the fish with an image problem, and the planet running out of time. While this cute kid with a husky voice and permanent bed hair, has a hard time being taken seriously in film circles, conservationists are lapping up his documentary Sharkwater, which opens in Sydney this week. Until now sharks have not been sexy, and neither was environmental activism. Sharkwater will change that. It certainly changed Stewart.
"I thought I was going to make a pretty underwater film with no people in it," he admits.
If Stewart shies from the suggestion that he may have been "politicised" by the film he made instead, he will accept that he has been made into "an activist and a revolutionary" by Sharkwater. "I was charged with attempted murder, chased by the Taiwanese mafia, and threatened with machine guns. At one point I was looking at having my leg chopped off," he grins. And that was before he'd shot a single frame underwater. Stewart has been swimming with sharks since he was 9, and as a stressed out teenager he used to cope, he says, by acting like a dog. "I'd think what would a dog do in this situation? Animals aren't caught up with the doubt and self consciousness that plagues humans."
What did Stewart learn from sharks? For one thing, they have superbly sensitive detectors which can gauge a diver's heart beat and emotional state. Stewart trained himself from an early age to stay very calm when he was around them. The training came in handy when he was in Costa Rica watching a flesh eating disease crawl up his leg.
He also got on well with controversial environmentalist Paul Watson, who prowls the high seas in his ship Sea Shepherd, intimidating illegal fishing vessels. It was with Watson, off the coast of Guatemala that Stewart ran into the billion dollar shark fin industry, and fell foul of the global mafia which controls it. This thrilling, disturbing interlude caught him by surprise, but makes the film as thought provoking as it is spectacular.
Now that Sharkwater has been a huge success, Stewart says, "I have realised how powerful the film medium is. So for the next movie we're going to look at how the planet is going to survive the next 100 years."
The outlook may be frightening, but, "I have hope," he says. "It's amazing what humans can do when something is in their own interest."
It sounds ambitious, but Stewart is young, fit, calm, and passionate "about how much trouble we are in" on planet earth.
For the record, he does not eat seafood. Particularly shark.