Filmmaker says more must be done Continued from page 1 5 · Thursday, April 5, 2012 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com killed for shark-fin soup, I wanted to do something about it," he said. The film criticizes the shark-hunting industry for its cruelty and how the industry is driving sharks into extinction. "The shark populations have gone down by 90 per cent. Nine out of every 10 sharks in the world have been killed," Stewart told the students. However, Stewart's film has been trying to overturn the consumption of shark-fin products. "When we released this film, there were 16 countries that have banned shark finning," he said. Just to prove that children could do something about the slaughter of sharks, Stewart told the students about a Grade 6 class in Saipan, Micronesia. After Sharkwater was released, the class called him and the students said they wanted to do something to stop the killing of sharks. They went to work and convinced their local government to ban shark finning. "Right after that, on another island in Micronesia, in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean, on an island called Guam, a Grade 7 class heard what happened in Saipan and said: `If a Grade 6 class can do it, we can do it too'. Pretty soon, Guam became the third place in the world to ban shark fins." Stewart said it's a good start that such places O R T H O T I C S , "He's (filmmaker Rob Stewart) my hero and I really like sharks. He's the only one that I know who is trying to save them." Luke Hoorntje, Grade 2 student Pine Grove School. as Toronto and Oakville have banned shark-fin products, but it's not enough. More needs to be done, he said. "Some sharks can swim thousands of kilometres. Some sharks swim from California to Hawaii to Australia. For sharks, the whole ocean is their home. They don't just hang out in one place," he told the students. "If you want to protect sharks, you can't just protect them in one place. It's not good enough to just get a ban on shark finning in one area, it must be all over the world." During the presentation, Stewart showed clips of his shark film and his new project about the coral reefs. He talked about various types of sharks and how they are important to the ecosystem of the oceans and how they have been around since the age of dinosaurs, for approximately 400 million years. Many sharks are predatory animals, he said, but it's rare for them to attack humans. If it does & P E D O R T H I C C A R E happen, it is usually by mistake. He said sharks will release the human from its jaw once it realizes it bit something it did not mean to, "I've spent the last 10 years filming and diving with sharks and I've never been bitten by a shark," he said. He told the students they can do something to help curb the slaughter of sharks and other animals, and they can start right at home. "What is important for you guys to do is to influence your parents," he said. "You have to convince your parents to be conscious of what they're eating. Where are they getting their food from? A lot of animals in the world get killed when they're accidentally caught by other fisheries." As an example, he said some shrimp fisheries will waste about 85 per cent of what they catch as the nets trap animals that are not shrimp, which get thrown back into the water after they're dead. The young boy who impressed the filmmaker says he was impressed himself by Stewart in return. "He's my hero and I really like sharks," Hoorntje said. "He's the only one that I know who is trying to save them." Hoorntje's love of sharks began when he was in Hawaii and saw a tiger shark swim past the boat, he said. "I was the first one to see it and it swam right past. It looked like it was chasing a fish." Q: Are all bags of soil the same? A: No. If you want an abundance of flowers and vegetables, it all starts with good quality soil. 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