Here's a documentary about sharks, their place in the ecosystem, the brutal trade in shark fins, which is destroying the population of these creatures, some of the world's oldest, and about the efforts of those who try to protect the sharks (and make themselves famous in the process).<br /><br />It gets off to a pretty good start, with some amazing footage of sharks and interesting facts (I'd like to hope those are facts) about sharks. The bits about mating hammerheads in equatorial waters are especially impressive, as are those of the director holding and stroking a 7-8' shark. The film starts doing a pretty good job showing the gentler, lighter side of sharks (which ARE truly amazing creatures).<br /><br />Then Sharkwater makes a strong case for protection of sharks (with very compelling shots of the gruesome shark finning trade), and immediately goes on to destroy this case with unbelievable statements and shifting the focus to a shark protection group (a radical version of Greenpeace with guerrilla tactics). Keeping the director of the film and Canadian leader of this group in the limelight for what felt like three-quarters of the film made the whole thing seem a shameless vanity project for them.<br /><br />Let me cite a few examples of what I thought was pretty offensive intellectually. In one scene the filmmakers say that sharks protect the ocean's capacity for generating oxygen. There may be logic to that, but a little further explanation of how sharks cycle back into the oceanic ecosystem would be great, since it's not immediately clear how creatures at the top of the oceanic food chain help those at the bottom (phytoplankton) create oxygen. Leaving any explanation out altogether makes this statement very unconvincing - and actually, most explanations of little facts just like this would make Sharkwater much more interesting and its message much more compelling.<br /><br />Also, film makers keep calling shark-finning a trillion-dollar industry (I think I heard that phrase at least a dozen times). I mean, come on, how many trillion-dollar industries are there altogether? There's oil, and maybe some mining would come close, and maybe retail trade, and commercial fishing as a whole and that's probably it. The rest of industries would be down in the billions. It's pointless exaggerations like that that undermine the credibility of the best causes. They only make other argumentation so much less credible.<br /><br />Then the film proceeds to tell the story of a noble struggle of the good guys, and stays at it for most of its running time. Ooooh, and don't they love being in front of the camera, strutting around, talking, nursing their wounds (of uncertain origin - was it a tiny shark bite, after all?), scraping with police and courts in distant lands! They're after the shark-killers, overfishing sharks in equatorial Pacific for their fins, brutally slicing off the fins and often discarding the bodies (which makes me wonder how some of that footage was made, were the filmmakers actually aboard one of those boats, filming the definning process, without bothering to intervene?).<br /><br />Their methods? I am sorry, but ripping the sides of long-line fishing boats with a metal rod they called a "can-opener" or illegally confiscating fishing gear feels to me too much like piracy, of a very real and violent kind (nothing like you'd see in Disney or P2P networks). I am sure the international maritime law has a few things to say about that. Yes, something has to be done to attract attention to the plight of sharks and to stop, but I'm not sure these methods are acceptable even for a good cause.<br /><br />This cause is further compromised by one-sided presentation. Something slightly more balanced would make the case for shark protection so much stronger.<br /><br />To recap, the film has some good things in it (underwater shoots and shark facts) which is not enough to redeem the careless reasoning, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion of the filmmakers, and (to put it very mildly) questionable methods they use to stop the killing of sharks. Disgusting, really.