Rob Stewart really loves sharks. In fact, he thinks sharks are “perfect” in just about every way. When we first find Rob, he’s holding a shark in a loving embrace and it appears as though the shark would rather be just about anywhere else. Nevertheless, the passion of Stewart is apparent from the opening frames of Sharkwater.

Right off the bat, it should be noted that this doc is not about sharks. It’s about Rob Stewart. Sure, he tries to dispel some myths that people have about sharks in the first half hour or so. Rob tells us that movies like Jaws and the numerous “media” portrayals of sharks are wrong. He exclaims that sharks “don’t eat people” and calms us by adding that people who die from shark incidents “die because of blood loss.” Phew!

There’s sadly little to like about Sharkwater. The underwater photography is pretty neat, although it really doesn’t provide anything above standard National Geographic fare. Shots of Stewart swimming with the sharks are actually rather sparse in the 90-minute runtime, while shots of Stewart and some goons from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society seem to dominate things.

Stewart teams up with the Conservation Society and its founder, Paul Watson, after discovering that all of the sharks in the areas he used to swim in were gone. It couldn’t be that those sharks had migrated, as they do every year. Of course, Stewart spends little time actually telling us about sharks so we wouldn’t know, either. When he does provide some facts, they’re pretty broad: “If sharks ate people, I would have been eaten by now.”

Stewart’s journey to save the sharks takes him to part of Asia where they’re considered delicacies. He also hitches his wagon to Watson and makes his way to Costa Rica, where their crew tries to head off another ship of shark poachers. Watson’s boat rams the other vessel and sprays it down with water, trying to force it to sink or land or whatever. This goes on for quite some time and sets up the tone for the rest of the film, as we’re suddenly dealing with the rousing life of a rebel environmentalist and the sharks are nowhere to be found.

Watson and Stewart find themselves facing charges (seven counts of attempted murder) for the incident on the high seas. They’re put under house arrest, but Stewart opines that they “must escape” and they do, heading back to open waters. Oh, and Stewart also mentions that he believes that the “shark mafia” is after them.

Zoinks!

Stewart, Watson, and the crew head back out to international waters. On the run from the coast guard, the shark mafia, and an envious Michael Moore, Stewart gets hospitalized for “flesh-eating disease” and the movie takes yet another diversion. Of course, this isn’t actually a diversion. Sharkwater is all about Rob Stewart, after all. A few shots of Stewart ambling about in a Speedo should seal that observation.

Tossing any moral questions aside temporarily, Sharkwater is a pretty bad documentary about sharks. It is meaningful for those interested in the “conservation movement” and works as a pretty good recruiting film for the Sea Shepherd Society. Should anyone want to join Paul Watson for a life on the high seas filled with days of ramming smaller boats filled with fishermen and nights filled with rambling about how humans are the plague of the earth, this is a good place to start.