Andrew Pugsley (AJ) and Steve Warren (reporting) were kindly put forward by the editor of Dive Magazine, Simon Rogerson, as suitable guests for the premiere screening of the documentary Sharkwater. Sharkwater has gathered, to date, 22 awards from film festivals around the globe, including Antibes---our benchmark. The film was made by Rob Stewart, a young Canadian underwater stills photographer turned film maker. Sharkwater is his first film project. The film is not really a celebration of sharks---that's been done time and again---but a sometimes hard hitting expose of the shark finning trade. Sharkwater charts the attempts by Sea Shepherd activists to prevent long-lining for sharks in two of the world's finest shark diving destinations: Cocos Island and the Galapagos Islands. Invited by the government of Costa Rica to see off illegal shark finners in Cocos, which they administer, Sea Shepherd is soon attempting to bring a fishing boat into port for arrest. When the boat resists, first water cannon are deployed to try and flood her engines and then battering is used to finally get the boat to give in. But it is Sea Shepherd that is arrested. The finning industry is huge and mafia controlled. Corruption rises high into the legal system is the film's central message. Sea Shepherd makes a break for freedom (no one thought to take the keys or disable her engines) and heads next for Galapagos. But success here is also limited as a long-lining ban is swiftly overturned. It has since been reinstated. However the ban is not enforced and word is that one reason liveaboard trips have been curtailed is to prevent evidence of shark finning being uncovered. Stewart returns secretly to Costa Rica to shoot more undercover footage of shark fin processing on shore. These sequences form some of the most exciting parts of the movie, since shark action tends to be beautifully filmed, but shows sharks behaving naturally and not biting at baits or doing anything else usually considered sharkworthy by the media. It's sharks as most divers will have observed them.

Sharkwater has a strong conservation message delivered by Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd group, spokesmen from Greenpeace and, of course shark experts. Sam Gruber is a noted authority on sharks. He's a natural elder statesman for getting the message across. Less justifiable is the inclusion of Eric Ritter, the man who was famously bitten on camera in the Bahamas while proving his theory that controling your heart rate makes you invincible to attack. No mention is made of the attack or the events that led up to it and I think this an omission on Stewart's part. Some of the science is also hard to accept at face value: killing sharks could lead to a massive overpopulation of fish that will consume all the plankton that we rely on to absorb carbon dioxide.

But overall Sharkwater is an extremely interesting movie and will provoke both thought and controversy. It will receive a limited cinema release from 2008 February 22.

See also:

• The Sharkwater website