Feb. 13, 2017 "Rob Stewart: courageous environmental activist": Today I found this article by Paul Watson in the Globe and Mail:
At the age of 22, Robert Stewart was a young and energetic man who understood that the most powerful weapon in the world is the camera, and armed with a camera he set out in the year 2002 to change the world.
He succeeded.
With his award winning film Sharkwater he actually did change the world. He transformed fearsome monsters into beautifully awesome creatures, deserving of both respect and empathy.
Rob was a man passionate about sharks. He saw them as beautiful sentient beings whose existence contributes to a healthy oceanic eco-system. He set out to prove that his intuitive perception about the true nature of sharks was real, and he did just that.
When Rob boarded my Canadian flagged ship the Ocean Warrior we explored the once shark-abundant waters around Costa Rica’s Cocos Island and the enchanted islands of the Galapagos.
Despite the obstacles, together we found the sharks and together we found trouble with frequent confrontations with shark-finning poachers. Together we were arrested for our interventions for filming crimes in a nation where such crimes are ignored and even protected by the authorities and where a camera is considered as something subversive.
His images contrasted the beauty of sharks within their element against the ugly images of the horror of their living finless bodies tossed overboard, drifting helplessly to the bottom of the sea to die slowly, their shocked eyes open, allowing us, for a moment, to glimpse their pain as the spark of life was slowly extinguished.
Rob once told me that he understood that his work was dangerous but that the least of those dangers was being killed by a shark. He was literally a shark hugger and the image of him with his arms around a large shark, his hand affectionately stroking what most people considered a fearsome creature, was revolutionary and enlightening.
The man knew sharks. He understood their importance and his confidence with his views about sharks allowed him to approach and film some of the most amazing images ever captured about these spectacular apex predators.
In addition to being a marine biologist, Rob Stewart had the four most important virtues needed to be a world class expert on sharks and the reality of our relationship with the living diversity within oceanic eco-system.
These virtues are passion, empathy, courage and imagination.
He had the courage to follow his passion with a remarkable empathy for his subject and the imagination to transform the focus of his work through the media of film in a way that changed the perception of sharks to tens of millions of people around the planet.
Rob died doing what he loved. He took chances. Three deep dives in one day using a rebreather was dangerous and he knew it was dangerous. These devices, even in the hands of a professional diver like Rob, are unpredictable. Some people have asked why he was using a rebreather. The answer is that it allowed him to stay down long and because it does not produce bubbles, allowing him to get closer to the sharks, which are animals that are easily spooked by bubbles. It allowed him to be like one of his subjects rather than a suspicious invader from another world.
Speaking with Rob and looking into his eyes revealed a deep sadness at what our species has done to the sharks. We slaughter tens of millions of them every year to the point that many shark species hover on the brink of extinction and that is why the film he had been working on is called Sharkwater Extinction.
Rob was an incredible educator in the spirit of Captain Jacques Cousteau. He brought the aquatic realm onto land and confronted us with the reality of the true nature of sharks. That in itself was heroic, even more so than his extraordinary feats of underwater documentation. It was heroic because he was championing a creature that has for centuries inspired fear and loathing. As a filmmaker, he was the antithesis of Steven Spielberg and Sharkwater was the Anti Jaws.
It was my privilege to stand with Rob to present Sharkwater at the Toronto Film Festival. It was my privilege to dive with him in the Galapagos and at Cocos Island.
Rob pioneered a new and intimate approach to documenting sharks and I believe he inspired other courageous film makers like Michael Muller (White Mike) and Madison Stewart (Shark Girl). He laid the groundwork for both film makers and conservationists.
Most importantly he has left a legacy.
He will be greatly missed, by his family and friends, by his fellow Canadians and by caring and dedicated people around the world who will never forget his work, his courage, his talent, his resolve, his imagination and his awesome passion for life, beauty and truth.
Feb. 24, 2017 "The legacy of Canadian filmmaker and conservationist Rob Stewart": Today I found this article by Brad Wheeler in the Globe and Mail:
On first appearance, the funeral for the Canadian conservationist and filmmaker Rob Stewart last weekend was like most others, albeit one with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in attendance, and the guest book for mourners not a traditional bound copy of remembrances but Stewart’s own Save the Humans, an autobiography and manifesto.
But what was most unusual about the service – a gracefully uplifting event – was the forward momentum of its message. Never has the Mary Elizabeth Frye poem Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep been so insistent; rarely has a funeral seemed like such a starting point. According to those who knew him well, Stewart wouldn’t have it any other way.
“With Rob,” media personality George Stroumboulopoulos said afterward, “it was all about purpose.”
During the funeral, Stewart’s “Fat Wednesday” parties in his California cabin were brought up. These were high-life feasts that sometimes involved costumes and that often extended into Thursdays, but, according to Stroumboulopoulos, were breaks in the action rather than the point of anything. “The parties were fun and in the moment, but Rob was a big-picture guy,” he said. “There was work to be done. There still is.”
Stewart, a Toronto-born free spirit in love with the universe, was known for his acclaimed 2006 documentary, Sharkwater, an underwater illumination about a creature we’ve been unnecessarily groomed to fear. He died recently in a diving mishap off the Florida Keys, where he was filming Sharkwater Extinction, a sequel.
He was 37 years old.
Sharkwater, which will be screened across the country Feb. 25 at selected Cineplex cinemas in support of WWF-Canada, shows Stewart hugging a shark. It’s an allegory for his cause and a symbol of his allure – sharks and everyone from Richard Branson to Leonardo DiCaprio were drawn to the boyish, otherworldly man whose optimism was intoxicating.
“He had a magnetism that was unparalleled,” said Brock Cahill, a close friend of Stewart’s. “Sharks are able to sense electromagnetic energy. They can read your mood and your energy from miles away, and they were, like all animals, drawn to Robbie. He was so welcoming and excited to see the sharks that they would reciprocate, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.”
I first spoke to Cahill on the phone from Florida, shortly after Stewart’s body was discovered deep in the water, days after he disappeared, near where he had been filming. Cahill was one of the three divers on the boat when Stewart sunk after momentarily surfacing from a dicey third dive of the afternoon.
“Robbie was not afraid to push the envelope,” Cahill said at the time, “but he was meticulous, never reckless.”
Stewart was using diving equipment that utilized a “rebreather” apparatus. The technology involves a mixture of gases and the recapturing of oxygen expelled. The advantage is that the system produces no exhale bubbles, thus allowing an underwater filmmaker to get closer to his subjects. “Rob used to say that using standard scuba gear was like going on a Serengeti safari with a weed blower on your back,” Cahill said.
The rebreathing technology is riskier, though; a third dive using the system is not advisable. But the gear allows a diver to be more at one with the ecosystem being explored – a serene, ultra-immersive condition irresistible to Stewart. “You feel,” Cahill said, “less like an intruder.”
Cahill, a yoga-instructing Californian, first met Stewart after seeing Sharkwater more than a decade ago. Sensing they were kindred spirits, Cahill cold-called Stewart and invited him on a diving expedition in Mexico in search of whale sharks. Stewart accepted; the two quickly became comrades in ocean conservation.
The fateful trip to Florida earlier this month took more than a year of planning. The goal was to capture on film the elusive and highly endangered sawfish, a shark-ish ray so rare as to be considered divine. “Rob wanted to show the world their beauty and their majesty,” Cahill said, “and to intrigue the public about them.”
Stewart would die trying.
Over the phone, Cahill had relayed a supernatural conversation he’d had with Stewart while the search in the ocean for his body continued. “Let me bring you back to the world and to your family,” Cahill told his missing friend in a dream. According to Cahill, in his vision, Stewart was resistant to leaving the water, but agreed to, on the condition that Cahill continue the work that they had started.
An instant later, Stewart’s body was finally found, deep in the sea, after days of searching.
“I still get goosebumps thinking about it,” Cahill said after the funeral service. “I don’t think I could carry on this mission on my own. Thankfully, I won’t have to. Robbie will always be with me, and others will be as well.”
At the funeral, accompanying a video tribute, the blissful and hopeful sound and message of a recording by the Hawaiian ukulelist Israel Kamakawiwoole wafted through the sunlit church:
High above the chimney tops is where you’ll find me / Somewhere over the rainbow way up high / And the dreams that you dare to, oh why, oh why can’t I?
From a soothing medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World, these are words about overcoming fears and enacting change – the theme of the service that also included inspirational lines first used by Apple for its “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” ad campaign in 1997.
“And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,” the marketing passage goes. “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
My opinion: I'm going to put that in my inspirational quotes.
What was used in 1997 to sell products was now being used as encouragement, for all intents and purposes from Stewart, a crazy dreamer whose death was anything but in vain.
My opinion: I saw the CBC Doc's ep called "The Third Dive" about him.
The Third Dive: The Death of Rob Stewart - CBC Docs POV
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