[WAVES SPLASHING]
[SERENE INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING]
ROB STEWART: I got lost
in the ocean.
I was underwater.
Took a wrong turn,
got stuck in some currents.
By the time I surfaced,
I was a mile and a half
away from where
I should've been.
I thought I was gonna die.
The only option I had
was to not give up.
That was very much a metaphor
for what we're going through now.
'Cause if you give up,
100% you're dead.
I think we're in that
situation right now.
You can't give up.
ROB: So we just snuck
into Costa Rica.
The first time since 2002,
14 years ago,
to check out what's going on
with the fin industry here
and what we might be
able to do about it.
And we had a local contact
set up to do interviews for us.
So, the word is already in the
Costa Rican government now that...
I'm here
and that Sharkwateris here,
and we're making Sharkwater 2.
We're not here without a filming
permit, we already know the country.
So we gotta watch our back.
ROB: 15 years ago,
I began a quest to save
sharks from shark fin soup,
a Chinese delicacy.
Millions of sharks
were being finned,
where they were pulled out of the
water, their fins were cut off,
and were thrown back
into the oceans to die,
destroying the populations of some
of the most important predators
the planet has ever had.
And I thought that if I could
change the public's view of sharks
if I could make them love
these animals like I did...
See that they're beautiful and
amazing and magnificent and important,
then maybe they'd wanna
fight for their protection
like they fight for pandas
and elephants and bears.
[SPLASHING]
Well, the movie, you know,
it took me five years,
and nearly k*lled me
half a dozen times.
[COCKS g*n]
We had to run from the country
while the coast guard
was f*ring machine g*ns at us.
And it, you know,
turned into this crazy story
that shows you how much money there
is in the exploitation of sharks.
The film, Sharkwater,
brought the plight of sharks for
shark fin soup into the spotlight,
resulting in the creation
of conservation groups,
government policy changing
all around the world,
and an empowered youth that knew
they could change the world.
Today, shark finning is banned
throughout most of the world.
But now, sharks are in
more trouble than ever before.
We're k*lling up to
150 million sharks a year,
but scientists can only account
for 70 million of those.
There are 80 million sharks every
year that are getting k*lled,
and nobody knows why, or where
those sharks are going.
ROB: And what's changed in Costa
Rica in the last ten years?
RANDALL ARAUZ: Well,
it's changed dramatically from Sharkwater.
We're actually turning into
marine conservation leaders
in these conventions.
The Costa Rican
is doing a great job.
Unfortunately, we had
a new president step in,
and in the matter
of a stroke of a pen,
in one year, many of these
policies were reversed.
We saw Costa Rica export 900
kilos of hammerhead shark fins
against the CITES convention.
They actually did two
exportations, um, to do this.
The government of Costa Rica just decided
to ignore its commitments with CITES
and the international
community,
and Costa Rica just decided,
"We're gonna export
these hammerhead shark fins
"because they're
public interest."
And they did.
[FOLK MUSIC PLAYING]
RANDALL: And they even got
the president of Costa Rica
to sign a statement saying that the government
was no longer going to protect sharks
in international conventions.
And that's when
we really flipped,
because the work that we had done
for ten years over three presidents,
in a matter of months, it's
all, you know, torn to pieces.
Costa Rica's not going
that way anymore.
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS]
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[JOURNALISTS SPEAKING
IN SPANISH]
Um, is shark finning
still happening in Costa Rica?
Uh, it's happening,
but without the permission
and without the support,
and without the, uh,
willingness of the Costa Rican government.
Finning is happening simply
because it's an illegal action.
And just as it happens
with narcotrafficking
or any other action,
it continues to happen,
and I regret it.
And the authorities
of Costa Rica
are taking all the necessary
steps to prevent it.
[JOURNALISTS CLAMORING]
REGI DOMINGO: It's always the same with
them. Say one thing and do another.
ROB: We're headed
to Puntarenas
because we'd figured out that if you want
to bring illicit fins into Costa Rica,
all you have to do is land
them in port on the weekend
when the fisheries body
that looks after fish
isn't working.
So we're gonna rock up to
Puntarenas, pull out our cameras,
and see if we can film
anything illegal
happening on the weekends and happening
without any official body watching.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
ROB: Are you going
to be your real name?
No.
I'm gonna be Laurette.
ROB: How about when
they ask you for your ID?
So do you think they'd
have to take my ID?
ROB: Just trying to
watch your back, Regi.
ROB: People don't realize there's so
much money in the trade of animals,
there's so much money
in the trade of fins.
It's a billion-dollar industry.
There's multimillionaires
playing mafia rings
like puppeteers trying
to exploit the resource.
ROB: You've got
to be kidding me.
REGI: I'm not surprised.
We're gonna meet
Williams Flores,
who, when we were
last in Puntarenas,
told us about
these mafia warehouses
drying shark fins.
And so now we're back in Costa
Rica, we're gonna go meet him
and see how the situation has
changed, where they're drying fins,
and what we might
be able to do
to help save sharks
in Costa Rica.
- Hello.
- Hi.
- How are you?
- Good. Come here.
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
- REGI: Thanks.
- MAN: That's yours.
MAN: Get a life jacket.
It's better.
- For what? To look like a tourist?
- To seem more tourist.
Sure. Good idea.
[WILLIAM SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
ROB: Which one is the Varadero?
BROCK CAHILL: That one,
right there, Franju.
ROB: Sharks are worth
an enormous amount of money,
and it's mostly for their fins.
And, you know, a single pound
of fin is worth over $200 US.
So, to fishermen around the
world in third-world countries,
you can pull up a shark,
cut off its fins,
throw the rest of the body
back, dry the fin.
You don't need refrigeration
systems on your boat,
so even the most decrepit
boats can go out there
and make enormous
amounts of money.
And it's... Sharks
are being fished everywhere.
ROB: Oh, look,
he's got something.
What is it?
REGI: Looks like
a hammerhead to me.
ROB: So, you wanna
buy it off him?
He looks like
he's interested in...
ROB: Blacktips?
REGI: Ehm, no, this is
a little hammerhead.
[REGI SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[MERCHANT SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
They have 30 of these ones.
ROB: 30, and they're
little blacktips, right?
- REGI: Yeah.
- ROB: Yeah. Okay.
ABRAHAM STERN:
You have to be careful.
Okay.
That's a must.
You cannot go... Especially if you're
gonna be sh**ting in Puntarenas.
You already know how
dangerous it is right there.
You guys run for your life.
I remember one sh**ting...
You were meeting,
or you went into
a warehouse, I think so,
and you saw the
shark fins on the roof.
And you guys were
running, literally.
So we have to be careful.
Costa Rica is a good country.
Unfortunately, there's
very bad layers in it.
WILL: Ready, Rob.
[DRONE WHIRRING]
[WILLIAM SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
ROB: Holy sh*t,
there's one clear panel
and I think there's
fins in it.
ROB: When we realized how
much money there was in fins
and all of these operations,
and how much money was going to
Costa Rica for the fin industry,
that was a major eye-opener.
ROB: Wow, that's a lot of fins.
ROB: You think of Costa Rica and you think,
you know, lots of conservation happening.
You don't expect one of the
most progressive countries
down there to
encounter that, but we did.
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
REGI: We have to
leave this place right now.
ROB: What's going on?
REGI: This hotel is from
the owner of Mariscos Wang.
It's Diego, so it's one
of the big mafia
in Puntarenas.
BROCK:
That makes perfect sense.
We have been sleeping here,
so it's not nice.
You know,
we've been here thus far.
WILL: Yeah, but we were flying
drones off the roof yesterday.
What do you mean?
We're being a little more
conspicuous today.
Taking off
remote control helicopters
off the roof
and flying over the ports.
So, now,
a few people have
seen us do that.
REGI: I think we have to check
out and go our separate ways.
For sure.
REGI: After that,
I got death threats,
and I had to leave Costa Rica.
The next time I saw Rob
was just before the last dive.
ROB: I was a fish nerd
when I was a kid.
I was chubby, I stuttered,
and I ended up liking animals
more than people.
I had a goldfish bowl, I think,
from the time I was zero,
and just fell
in love with fish,
and looked into that world
and saw these creatures
that I didn't really understand,
that could breathe water, that could fly.
I had the opportunity
to go underwater
and hang out in the
Caribbean as a kid.
Because I was so young,
I wasn't allowed to dive.
The only way I could go down
there and hang out with these fish
was holding my breath
and swimming down.
And it just...
It was the most magical world possible.
You know, you're in a
three-dimensional world, you can fly.
And, uh, as a kid
that just enthralled me.
I met my first shark
when I was nine.
I saw the shark out
of the corner of my eye,
and it swam in my direction.
And the second it made eye contact with
me, it freaked out,
and swam the other direction.
For me, that whole experience,
five-foot Caribbean Reef shark
terrified of
a nine-year-old kid,
removed all the fear
I had of sharks in the ocean
and allowed me to go explore it
further, fall deeper in love.
[GRUNGE MUSIC PLAYING]
ROB: And I'm here in Cat
Island in the Bahamas
because one of the most
amazing sharks in the world,
the oceanic whitetip shark,
come here only in the month of May.
Now, the oceanic whitetip shark was once the
most abundant large predator on the planet.
They were everywhere,
but because they have massive fins
that are highly valued
in the fin industry,
oceanic whitetip shark populations
in the Atlantic and Caribbean
have dropped 99%.
When I heard these creatures
were spotted in this area,
my team decided
to take a chance
and see if we could
capture them on film
so others could
see the reality
behind what Jacques Cousteau
once called,
"The most dangerous
of all sharks."
Having never filmed them before,
and with a serious reputation,
I'm a bit cautious as I learned
to understand these sharks.
[ENCHANTING INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING]
Oceanics turned out
to be absolute sweethearts.
They had the most expressive and
curious eyes I've seen in any shark.
And you can really
feel them reading you.
They're also a little cheeky
and very intelligent.
The most important thing
for me when filming sharks
is to try to understand
what life is like for them,
how they see the world,
and what makes them special,
because my goal is to make
people fall in love with sharks.
And for that, people need to
see a bit of their softer side,
a bit of their intelligence,
and maybe see a bit
of themselves in the sharks.
[FUNKY INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING]
MARK QUARTIANO: Something big today, baby.
Something big.
Stand by, we're gonna
hang 'em high.
I got a good feeling
today, baby.
[ROB SPEAKING]
Oh, do we have to?
Well, they say 100,000,
but I don't think that's true.
I say more like 50.
- ROB: 50,000?
- Yeah.
ROB: What kind of shark you'd like
to catch today more than any other?
MARK: Right now? Uh, I'd like to
catch, uh, either a mako or a tiger.
Hammerheads are probably the most
common sharks we catch out here.
[ROB SPEAKING]
No. Negative.
No, hammerheads
aren't endangered.
There's plenty of them out there
and we catch them every trip.
That's all
Shark Weekpropaganda.
MARK: I mean, you know,
you gotta put it in perspective.
I mean, this is just an
animal that's on Earth
for... For what reason?
For man to eat.
I mean, sure,
there's a decline in the sharks
because of the commercial guys
are whacking them pretty good.
And there's a demand for them.
So, you put a trophy price on
something, it's gonna die.
Simple. Show me the money.
We normally get a bite
right about now.
Sometimes, you know,
you're gonna wait a long time for a bite.
Like today,
when there's no current.
Water's kinda dirty.
A lot of trash in the water.
And, uh, you just have to wait.
What do you think it is people like
about going and fishing for sharks?
Sharks are the apex
predator, you know.
They always had been
and they always will be.
What was that?
You got a bite there?
Watch out! Get the nose Ryan.
Getting a bite right now.
I got a b*mb. I got a bite here.
He got a bite.
Take a line. Take a line.
Big fish here. Big fish.
All right, get set up,
guys. Get set up.
Oh, yeah. Big fish here. Whoo!
Right in his head.
Easy now, easy.
Very slow is good.
Cheer up. Cheer up.
Get ready to get it here.
I am ready.
How long is this going to take?
Sometimes, they'll come
right up to the boat,
you get an identification
on them,
and it might be
another hour after that,
it's really, really,
uh, average fight
with this setup, with this type
of rod and reel combination.
Average fight
on your average shark,
which is a lot of
different variables, obviously.
It's about half-hour
or 45 minutes.
They could go a lot quicker
or go a lot longer.
ROB: People tell you your whole
life to be afraid of sharks.
Pretty well everything we've
been receiving from the media,
from just about everybody,
is that sharks are dangerous,
and they're gonna k*ll you
and they're gonna eat you.
But the reality
is totally different.
You know, they've been here
for actually 400 million years.
They survived five
major extinctions on Earth
that wiped out most
life on the planet.
They've seen life on Earth
rebuilt from scratch five times.
450 million years
of shark's presence on Earth,
we've decimated them 30 years.
Shark populations dropped
90% in 30 years. 90%.
How could this be happening?
How could this be happening?
[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]
ROB: Sharks, in particular,
a lot of them in particular,
- hammerheads seem to not survive...
- MARK: After you catch 'em?
ROB: After you catch 'em.
MARK: If you just keep by the
boat for a few minutes or so,
their chance of survival is
really, really slim to none.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
You almost have
to cut 'em off at the boat
and let them keep
going swimming.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
You stop and take a picture,
and try to get their hooks out
and all that stuff.
It's probably not
gonna survive.
Yeah. And that's
okay with you?
- If the sharks don't...
- Well, what're you gonna do?
You can't, um,
put a sign on the hook and say,
"Hey, I don't want any
hammerheads biting this bait."
I mean, how're you
gonna do that?
MARK: Well done.
Well done.
Pretty work, guys.
Pretty work.
ROB: Maddie, what's happening?
Grab the other side.
MARK: Nice work, Maddie.
It's a wrap.
By the time you released,
he swam away really good.
Good job.
Hey, you gotta break a couple of
eggs if you wanna make an omelette.
Remember that, all right?
Good job.
That was really
f*cked up, bro.
I have seen, like, a hammerhead
like that once in my lifetime,
in the distance,
on the Great Barrier Reef,
for about 15 seconds
before it swam off.
And that was the closest
I've ever been to a hammerhead,
and that was terrible.
He's thrashing around
at the end, thrashing around.
And he just, like, gave up.
That's the worst thing about it,
like, you can film that
on a commercial fishing boat,
and it's still messed up,
which I understand why they do it.
But when people do that
kind of stuff for fun,
I have absolutely no contemplation of
what's going through that person's head,
why that's fun for someone.
MADISON: Rob said
it was good to see me having so much
care and sadness over an individual.
And I could still cry over one
animal after all we have seen.
It was like an older brother.
ROB: The k*lling of sharks
is, I think,
is one of the biggest
concerns that we should have
on the planet
ecologically today.
We depend on ecosystems
for survival.
We depend on other species.
They're part and parcel of
ourselves, of our daily lives.
Removing sharks is removing
part of the framework
that allows life
to exist on land.
It's the animal that sits
on top of 70% of the oxygen
in the air that we breathe from
phytoplankton in the oceans.
If you remove once species, the consequences
ripple through entire ecosystems.
And right now, we're removing, you know,
the most important predator the planet has.
And the consequences are going to
not just affect oceanic ecosystems,
they're going to affect
our ecosystems and ourselves.
[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
ROB: We're now k*lling up
to 150 million sharks a year,
and it's not just
shark fin soup anymore.
Sharks are now being k*lled
and renamed and fed to us,
so we don't know
we're eating shark.
This is a massive scandal representing
tens of millions of sharks every year.
[MAN SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
ROB: Eating sharks
is a bad idea.
We're eating endangered
super predators.
We're eating animals that can take
40 years to reach sexual maturity.
They can have very few young.
Most of the pollution
we've ever made as a species
has gone into
the environment untreated.
And that accumulates
in living animal matter
and concentrates as you
go up the food chain.
By the time you get to sharks,
they're enormously toxic.
With things like lead and
mercury and even neurotoxins.
So it's important that we
keep sharks out of our food.
They're enormously toxic.
Let's recommend to women and
children, don't eat them at all.
It's really important to bring
this message to the public.
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
Here are the fins.
- ROB: It's worth a lot of money.
- MAIKE: Here, it's $5.
- $5?
- Yeah.
- MAN: This is $5 here.
- Max.
- So $5 here, and in China, 200 bucks?
- Yeah.
MAIKE: A pound of the little
ones, it's 50 cents.
- 50 cents?
- Here in...
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
Baby hammerheads.
MAIKE: As we have learned,
there has been
two confiscations.
I checked the confiscations.
Why do they keep the fins here?
MAIKE: Because this is
the coast and ocean department
of the environment ministry.
Okay.
MAIKE: And it's
in their custody.
ROB: We're here in a
parking lot in Panama City
with hundreds of thousands
of dollars of shark fins
confiscated from people that were
trying to check these into airlines
and fly them to Asia.
[CONVERSING IN SPANISH]
This is a seizure of 800
pounds of shark fins in Panama
representing $300,000
in shark fins.
Uh, many of which are illegal and
on the endangered species list,
including the scalloped hammerhead
shark, our favorite species.
These are all
Scalloped hammerheads?
Yup. In essence, they should.
MAIKE: They are
huge hammerheads.
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
And there's 40,000 fins here?
38,868.
Oh, my God.
MAIKE: So we've seen
many different shark species,
um, of many different sizes.
Among these, probably
the largest hammerhead fins
that, at least, I have seen.
So, the newborns,
the lighter ones.
They seem to really get
a little bit depressed
when they see these
little, small...
- MAIKE: Just the tip of the iceberg.
- SEBASTIAN: Yeah.
[SEBASTIAN SPEAKING]
This is a lot of shark fins.
Yeah, I've never seen
something like that before.
RON: When we started
making Sharkwater,
there were four countries
that have banned shark finning.
When we were finished, there were 16
countries that have banned shark finning.
Now, there's more than
90 countries around the world
that have banned
the process of finning,
but none of them have banned
the importation of fins,
which means you can fin
as many sharks as you want
as long as you put the fins
on a shipping boat
before you bring them
into port, not a fishing boat,
which is a massive loophole.
WILL: So those
are reefer containers
that Rob's identified as
being full of frozen shark.
Think Rob's gonna get pinched?
That guy's obviously playing
close to security, right?
- [LAUGHING]
- ART GAETAN: Yeah.
I'm a little bit
surprised he is.
WILL: Yeah, he is.
He's not afraid of anything.
Holy crap.
That's a fin.
Just laying on the wharf.
WILL: So we're all shark biologists here.
Any idea what species?
JOE PRATT:
Not shark would be the guess.
WILL: Oh, God. Holy...
JOE: Yeah, that's not
blue shark, Brother.
WILL: No, that's not a blue.
We've seen plenty of their fins.
What do you think?
That's a dorsal
from something, I'd say.
What's this?
ROB: Blue shark tags.
WILL: Tiburon azul, yeah.
ROB: Stating that blue sharks that
were landed here were caught in Spain.
WILL: [CHUCKLING] Oh, creepy.
ROB: We're nowhere near Spain.
JOE: So, apparently,
they're not really trying to hide it.
Does this sh*t make you nervous?
No.
What's happening?
WILL: Where's the Japanese boat?
ROB: Right there.
And you can see
the trans-shipping boat.
They're right now
with each other,
and the freezer container
ship has got a crane
over top
of the Japanese boat right now.
WILL: Oh, sh*t, dude.
They're unloading right now.
ROB: At the end of the dock,
they're unloading blue sharks.
f*ck, what are these boats?
There's tons of them.
A car has
pulled up behind ours,
just randomly beside us.
He looks Costa Rican.
Oh, great.
[WHISTLING]
ROB: Hello. Hi, nice to meet you.
What's your name?
- MAN: Roden.
- ROB: Roden.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
- ROB: Slippery.
- MAN: Slippery.
ROB: Wow.
So much money.
Is this full or it will
be all the way full?
MAN: All the way full.
ROB: All the way. Wow.
ROB: They're all big
blue sharks in that container.
Blue sharks are cute,
they're dopey, big eyes.
They don't really
ever bite people.
They're loading
the shipping container
full of tens of thousands
of pounds of blue sharks
onto a shipping boat
to leave the country.
The word is out around the
world, that sharks mean money.
You know, we spent
four years, 15 countries,
trying to figure out what the biggest
environmental issues were out there,
only to discover that one of the biggest
destructors of our life support system
is in our own backyard.
I think the biggest issue
we have on the planet right now
aside from the environment, is our
lack of awareness of what's going on.
We don't know about our individual
actions, about our consumption,
about our government
and corporations
destroying our
life support system.
If we did, our morals
would engage,
and we'd be guided
to a world that works.
We'd hold our friends
and our family,
and our governments
accountable for this stuff.
We just don't know
what's going on.
ROB: It's 3:00
in the morning.
My parents were here
all the time, yeah.
What I've always told them, I just have
this belief that I'm gonna be okay,
and I'm sure
I'm gonna be okay.
I mean, I had times that I
almost d*ed and ended up okay,
and sort of reinforce that
belief that I'm gonna be okay.
I know exactly how
I'm gonna die,
when I'm gonna die.
Uh, it's sunrise,
and we're about to jump in
the water in Santa Monica Bay,
on the other side
of Catalina Island...
To go see what is
caught in drift nets,
nets that are a mile long,
that just hang
as a curtain at night
and catch anything
that swims into it.
It's a hugely destructive
method of fishing
that kills dolphins,
whales, turtles, sharks,
and all sorts
of things under
the guise of catching swordfish.
So, knowing how we've
already so decimated the oceans,
this method of fishing
should not be happening,
and it definitely shouldn't
be happening in Los Angeles.
The only reason it's happening
is 'cause people don't see it.
They don't know
what's happening here.
And we're gonna change that.
Some fisheries
will waste 85%
of what they bring
to the surface as bycatch.
Right now, we're wasting 54 billions
pounds of dead fish every year
that's brought out of the ocean
and k*lled and thrown back
because it wasn't
our target fish.
We wanted the more
expensive ones.
We threw back all these
amazing animals.
MAN: Come on, let's go.
- ROB: Are they sh**ting?
- MAN: Yeah, yes.
MAN: Let's go!
ALL: Let's go! Go, go, go!
ROB: So we just filmed a
thresher shark and a blue shark
on a drift gill net
right outside
of Los Angeles.
And while we were doing that,
all of a sudden, the boat
was immediately on top of us.
They were f*ring sh*ts
at you guys on the boat.
Um, both the blue shark and the
thresher shark were still alive,
so you can see their mouths opening
and closing and then struggling,
and the blue shark had the
mesh caught in its mouth.
And the thresher shark,
it was m*nled, all messed up
from thrashing around
within the net.
Really sad to see
an endangered majestic
superpredator
stuck in a primitive
fishing method
in the town
that I'm living in.
It's crazy.
- WILL: How do you feel?
- I don't feel good.
[CHUCKLES SOFTLY]
It's super emotional, it was really
hard to watch that thresher just dying.
But we're gonna stop this.
BROCK: That was the last time
Rob and I went diving together
in our own backyard.
Sure.
Make sure it's fresh.
WOMAN: Hey guys, this is Ashley,
how can I help you?
Yeah. Hey, I was wondering,
do you guys have any sharks in stock?
ROB: So they could recommend
going to this one over this one?
[MADISON SPEAKING]
Could you tell me what
kind of shark you have?
Black-eyed shark.
I am just curious as to what you
might have in stock for shark.
[WOMEN SPEAKING
OVER CELL PHONE]
Yeah, hey, I was wondering what
sharks you guys have in stock.
Awesome. And it's fresh-caught
daily in this time of year, right?
All right. Thanks a lot.
All right we'll be
by in a bit. Bye.
ROB: I'm wondering
if anybody back there knows
what this species of shark is.
Yeah, it's a wild shark.
Hi, can I have one
of your vegan meals, please?
[SERVICE CREW
SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
ROB: Thank you, thank you. Bye.
Do you know what this is?
WILL: Do you know
what swai is?
ROB: What the heck is swai?
WILL: Iridescent shark.
What do you have
that's got fish in it?
It's Alaskan Pollock.
Alaskan Pollock.
- That's in a box.
- In a box, okay.
Okay, we are in Florida,
and we just bought
a bunch of pet food,
and fast food,
and fish products,
and we're gonna test them to
see if there's shark in them.
DIEGO CARDENOSA:
We're right now at FIU.
Florida International
University.
My name is Diego Cardenosa,
I'm a PhD student from Stony
Brook University in New York.
We collect shark fin samples
and we do generic
bar coding on them,
so we assess the composition
and the proportion of species
in the shark fin trade.
All right. Let's do this.
Okay.
So, right now,
we're testing your samples of pet food,
um, some shark fillet
purchased in supermarkets,
um, some tuna salad.
So the idea's to try to see if we can find
any trace of shark DNA in those products,
um, and to identify, if there's
any shark DNA in those products,
try to identify it at least
to a species or genus level.
So basically, what this does,
is once we put it in the thermocycler,
- it will boil to 100 degrees.
- Okay.
So that destroys the tissue,
or whatever the sample is,
- and breaks the cell open.
- Yeah.
And captures everything
that is not DNA
and leaves you,
like, a clear...
A clear, um, liquid,
let's say, with the DNA.
This is the one
you're gonna use for it,
for your PCR afterwards.
ROB: Okay.
If there's a shark DNA
in this thing,
- it will let us know.
- ROB: Yeah.
Now just mixing a little bit
of, uh, shark DNA cocktail.
33% of the pet food product
tested positive for shark DNA,
including blacktip
and mako shark,
which is a vulnerable species
known for very high mercury levels.
We also found traces of
blacktips, scalloped hammerheads,
milk and blue shark DNA in the
beauty care products we tested.
ROB: Fishing study have showed
that shark populations
have dropped
an estimated 90%
in the last 30 years.
100 million sharks get k*lled every
year, and nobody notices.
It is astronomical.
And this is a huge
consumer awareness issue
that can be fought
and can be won.
We're not just k*lling sharks
for shark fin soup,
we're k*lling sharks for
a myriad of crazy reasons.
Sharks are now being k*lled
and renamed, and fed to us,
things like rock salmon
and flake,
so we don't know
we're eating shark.
Sharks are also
turning up in pet food,
live stock feed, fertilizer,
and even in cosmetics.
We're smearing endangered superpredators
on our faces without knowing it.
So it's important
for all of us,
if we want to ensure a healthy
environment into the future,
to make sure
that things we buy,
the foods we buy,
the cosmetics, are shark-free.
Insist in a world
that's shark-free,
and insist that your
cosmetics, your fertilizers,
your pet food,
your livestock feed,
doesn't contain shark
or shark parts.
[INAUDIBLE]
[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
These are rebreathers.
They recirculate
the air that you breathe
and inject the quantity
of gasses that you want,
depending on the depth
that you're going to.
In that way, you get
a lot closer to fish and sharks
because you
don't make bubbles,
which are very scary
for animals like that.
Uh, and you could stay
a lot longer.
You could stay down
for six hours almost.
As long as you want
or need to.
So we're gonna use this new technology
to go deeper than we've ever been before
to film a creature that people
have rarely seen in the wild,
the sawfish, one of the most
endangered sharks in the world.
WILL: So, I'm...
I'm gonna save a splash.
Still sitting 46 feet
off my mark,
so I think we're secure
as I can get us.
Let's do it.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[METAL CLATTERING]
[HISSING]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
[HISSES]
[FLARE LAUNCHES]
COAST GUARD:
Mayday, mayday, mayday.
COAST GUARD: This is
United States Coast Guard
communication station
sector key west.
We request a boat.
We need assistance. Over.
REPORTER 1: Watch standers at
Sector Key West Command Center
received a report
of a missing diver.
The diver is identified
as 37-year-old Robert Stewart
from Toronto, Canada.
REPORTER 2: Canadian
filmmaker has gone missing
while diving in Florida.
The US Coast Guard is searching
for Rob Stewart right now
off the coast of the...
REPORTER 3: Florida Keys. The US Coast
Guard tells us they're using a helicopter,
a boat, a team of divers,
and in the last hour,
they've just added a plane to that search.
The Coast Guard says...
REPORTER 4: Stewart and four others
were diving into Florida Keys
off the coast of Islamorada.
As their dive came to an end,
he resurfaced and signaled
that he was fine.
REPORTER 5: Stewart disappeared
while the boat crew attended
to his instructor
who had exited the water
but then collapsed on deck.
The friend said that he jumped
in, but couldn't find him.
He wasn't seen again.
REPORTER 6: Three days later,
the search continues,
including hundreds of volunteers in
small craft, helicopters and airplanes.
His worried parents pray
that he's found alive.
BRIAN STEWART:
It doesn't look great.
But we've got... He's the kind
of person that would survive.
SANDRA STEWART: He's super
fit and he's a great swimmer.
And he's done
thousands of dives.
[HELICOPTER HOVERING]
REPORTER 7: T he body of missing
Toronto filmmaker, Rob Stewart,
has been found in the waters
off of Florida Keys.
REPORTER 8: Tributes have been paid to
the Canadian filmmaker and campaigner,
Rob Stewart, who's d*ed
while diving off Florida.
Rob Stewart won
many awards for...
[REPORTER 9 SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
[REPORTER 10 SPEAKING
IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
[REPORTER 11 SPEAKING
IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
REPORTER 12: Deep sadness
in Toronto today
at the funeral
of Robert Stewart,
an acclaimed filmmaker and ocean
conservationist who d*ed at sea.
Stewart's known
worldwide for...
REPORTER 13: The family has received
messages of support from across the world.
Family and friends say
Stewart's job is not done yet.
BRIAN: We should be so thankful
that in this little galaxy of stars
that our life is
and our friends are,
that we had a son like Rob
at the center of it.
SANDRA: I think his real legacy
will be all of these other people
that he inspired who will
carry his work forward.
ROB: It was
an amazing journey.
It was very much
a learning process for me
all the way along.
Because in the beginning, it was sort
of, like, "What? We're all gonna die?"
All the way through, you
know, trying to figure out,
you know, how we're
gonna save ourselves.
But seeing all the destruction
that humans had wrought
on ecosystems and species and
the lack of care that was coming,
I sort of developed a distrust
and dislike of humanity at times.
And then,
through making this movie
trying to educate humanity
about what's happening to sharks
and seeing them take that
cause and fight for it,
particularly kids,
it really instilled
a lot more hope,
and made me love humanity
a lot more than I could before.
We still have a bright
future if we want it,
but we've got to
do something now.
[ OVER THE RAINBOWPLAYING]
YOUNG ROB: I'm in
to save the turtle! Whoo!
I'm standing in front of
Darwin's Arch at Darwin's Island.
This is Darwin's Arch, right?
And Darwin Island?
Now this is
the mecca of diving...
I lost it.
Like I ever had it.
ROB: When I started out,
I wanted to bring people closer to sharks
than they'd ever been before,
so that, you know, they could
actually see an interaction to sharks
they've never seen before
and truly understand them.
'Cause when elephant falls
for ivory in Africa
and the world goes crazy.
Elephants k*ll
200 people a year.
Sharks k*ll five
people a year.
We k*ll 100 million of them,
and nobody notices.
The reality behind sharks is that
they're not predators of people.
If sharks, you know,
ate people,
the oceans would be
a really dangerous place,
and people would be getting
eaten every day. But they're not.
I think what's unfair and
irresponsible is wiping out 90%
of the most important longest-lasting
predator the planet has
for the sake of soup.
[CROWD CHEERING]
Thank you, everyone,
for being part of the largest rally
for climate change in history.
This cannot end today.
This energy is amazing,
and you've got to bring it forth
into everything that you do.
That's nothing more
important than conservation
because conservation
is the preservation
of human life on Earth.
[CROWD CHEERING]
People don't understand how ecosystems
work because they never taught it.
I mean, if you look
at the education system,
why are taught
Shakespeare and Algebra
before we're
taught conservation
or we're taught how
to survive on the planet?
Especially if we know
by mid-century
that our survival is
very much in jeopardy.
[LAUGHTER]
High-five.
ROB: This stuff's important.
We depend on the oceans to survive.
We depend on life.
It's life that gives us our
food, our water and our air.
[CHILDREN CHEERING]
This is it. This is it.
This is the generation.
This is the task of your time.
Are we gonna save the ecosystems
we depend on for survival
or are we gonna live
in lack and starvation
and crisis and fight
each other over what's left?
I believe entirely that we are
all morally bound together,
and that if we are
made aware of these issues,
we'll make different decisions.
Be conscious of what you eat,
where you put your garbage,
and how you live your life.
Nothing is more
important than this.
There's never been
an issue this big,
and there's never been an issue that
needs your involvement more than this.
So, everybody, thank you.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
You've got an opportunity
to become a hero.
To be a hero.
[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
Sharkwater Extinction (2018)
Moderator: Maskath3