Rob Stewart

Rob Stewart (December 28, 1979 – January 31, 2017) was a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. He was best known for making and directing the documentary films Sharkwater and Revolution. He drowned at the age of 37 while scuba diving in Florida, filming Sharkwater Extinction. Early life Stewart was born in 1979, in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Sandra and Brian Stewart. He began underwater photography as a teenager, and became a scuba diving trainer at eighteen years old. He attended Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute and Crescent School in Toronto as a youth. For four years, Stewart was chief photographer for the Canadian Wildlife Federation's magazines, and a freelance journalist. He won awards for his journalism. He held a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Western Ontario, and studied zoology and marine biology in Kenya and Jamaica. Career 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.