basically the story's about the director who decided to go film sharks underwater. to do that, he teamed up with an eco-terrorist to go chase down poachers in Costa Rica, fighting on the high seas and battling death and infection every step of the way.

and if you want the official story, underwater filmmaker Rob Stewart did a documentary in order to showcase the plight of sharks around the world, travelling to the shark-rich waters of the world to expose the exploitation and corruption surrounding the shark-fin industry, especially in the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos. he spent five years on this, and nearly got himself killed several times.

He travelled with the crew of the Sea Shepherd, fought with poachers and got rammed by pirate boats, had a run-in with the government and tried for attempted murder, gunboat chases, mafia espionage (this is all from the synopsis off the site), and caught necrotizing fasciitis (flesheating disease for all you house and grey's fans).

Catch your attention yet? oh, and it has fantastic underwater videography (i.e. sharks galore)

For the uninformed, the Sea Shepherd is sort of a renegade arm of Greenpeace (since it was founded by one of their three founders), and they take a more confrontational approach towards environmental protection (such as sinking whaling ships). It basically fights poachers around the world, and its members are accused of maritime piracy and attempted murder (well, i suppose sinking ships and ramming them kinda kills the crew), but because of international law and differing jurisdictions, convicting and extraditing them sometimes poses a problem (and you wonder why i took a course in international law AND conflicts of law).

1) Sharks are killed largely for their fins, thanks to the whole shark fin soup fiasco. 100 million sharks a year die to fuel the demand for fins. Many of these sharks are finned then discarded into the water to die. It’s like killing an elephant for ivory or a rhinoceros for its horn, and because of this, shark populations have dropped 90% in the last 30 years.

2) Sharks eat fish. Life on earth depends on life in the sea which sits below sharks in the food chain. Phytoplankton in the sea convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, providing us with 70% of the oxygen we breathe. So, sharks eat fish, fish eat plankton. We kill the sharks, many more fish around to eat plankton. Less plankton = less oxygen and more carbon dioxide = global warming = no white christmas in new york.

3) No sharks means i'll be very bored when diving. Also, it means that the sick fish survive and breed so next time all you'll have to eat are sickly dying fish. Which by logical extension will kill you one day. okay maybe not (since i have no authority on it), but who wants small sickly fish anyways.

i think i just found my research topic for environmental law. and people bitch on about the lack of human rights and starvation and war crimes. humans can be so self-absorbed sometimes. sigh back to my essays.