Rob Stewart was a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. He was best known for making and directing the documentary filmsSharkwater and Revolution. He died at the age of 37 in a scuba diving incident while in Florida filming Sharkwater Extinction.
Stewart got the idea to make the movie Sharkwater at age 22, when he found illegal longline fishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. He travelled through fifteen countries for the next four years, studying and filming sharks, and going undercover to confront the shark fin industry. Sharkwater went on to win more than 40 awards at top film festivals. His follow-up film, 2012's Revolution, builds on Sharkwater, examining environmental collapse. In 2013, it was the highest grossing Canadian documentary, and it received 19 awards from global film festivals. In 2012 Stewart released the book Save the Humans, a biography detailing the importance of sharks in his life and the importance of making a positive impact in the ocean. In 2016, Stewart launched a Kickstarter to fund Sharkwater: Extinction, a sequel to Sharkwater that would focus on the 80 million sharks killed per year that are unaccounted for by scientists. He was working on the film at the time of his death.
In late January 2017, Stewart was in Florida filming Sharkwater Extinction, a sequel to Sharkwater. On January 31, he and his dive partner resurfaced from a deep wreck dive of the Queen of Nassau. His dive leader Peter Sotis fell unconscious while boarding the crew's boat, and as the ship team rushed to provide assistance, Stewart, who was still in the water, vanished. Paul Watson, a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist and friend of Stewart's, noted that he had been using a rebreather, which could have rendered him unconscious as well. A search was launched, and on February 3, the United States Coast Guard confirmed that Stewart's body had been located in the water approximately down, close to the spot on the surface from which he had disappeared. The cause of death was unclear initially. Stewart's funeral was held at Bloor Street United Church in Toronto on February 18, 2017. Released months later, the autopsy report from the Monroe County medical examiner stated that Stewart had died from drowning after succumbing to acute lack of oxygen at the surface of the ocean. In spring 2017, Stewart's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the death was caused by the negligence of the dive operators who provided equipment that did not meet US safety standards and left Stewart in the water without a dive leader.
Legacy
Stewart was working on a sequel film, Sharkwater Extinction, at the time of his death. Using footage already shot by Stewart as well as his written comments, the movie was completed by film and story editor Nick Hector and director Sturla Gunnarsson for the Rob Stewart Foundation. It premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival in September, as a "Special Event" screening that also incorporated a memorial tribute to Stewart and his legacy; the official release date was set for October 5. His mother Sandy Stewart said about the completion of the film that " entire team stayed with it, everybody stepped up. We have people from all over the world – cinematographers, filmmakers, really important people – offering to help finish this, and that was really heartwarming." At the 5th Canadian Screen Awards on March 12, 2017, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television announced that its annual award for Science or Nature Documentary Program would be renamed the Rob Stewart Award in Stewart's memory.
