At the age of 22, Stewart discovered illegal longline fishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, which gave him the inspiration for the film Sharkwater.
Over the course of the following four years, he traveled to fifteen different countries while studying and shooting sharks and engaging the shark fin trade covertly.
Robert Stewart cause of death: What happened to Rod Stewart brother?
Stewart was in Florida late in January 2017 filming Sharkwater Extinction, the follow-up to Sharkwater. He and his diving companion surfaced on January 31 after a lengthy dive at the Queen of Nassau’s wreck. Stewart, who was still in the water, vanished as the ship team raced to help his dive leader Peter Sotis after he passed out while boarding the crew’s boat. Stewart’s friend Paul Watson, a marine wildlife conservationist and environmentalist, pointed out that Stewart had been using a rebreather, which might have also knocked him out.
Following an extensive search, Stewart’s body was discovered in the water on February 3 about 200 feet (61 meters) below where he had vanished. On February 18, 2017, his burial service took place at Bloor Street United Church in Toronto. The Monroe County medical examiner’s autopsy report, which was published months later, stated that he drowned after falling into hypoxia near the ocean’s surface.
Stewart’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the spring of 2017 stating that the dive operators’ carelessness in providing him with equipment that did not adhere to US safety requirements and abandoning him in the water without a dive leader was to blame for his passing.
