There was probably a way to navigate this political and rhetorical minefield, but the "Sharkwater" movies barely acknowledge it. The closest we get in this movie is a moment where former Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solis Riviera tells Stewart that, while he agrees in the abstract that shark finning is wrong, fishermen have to make a living somehow, and that as long as the fins fetch a high price, they're going to be taken. Because Riviera's point-of-view has been coded as that of an antagonist, it feels like one of those moments in a thriller where the bad guy opens his mouth and you find, to your surprise, that you can see where he's coming from, even though there's no indication that the movie does. To a certain extent, every documentary about ecological activists has to deal with this issue, and some manage to address it more deftly than others ("Trophy" does an especially good job), but it's skirted here. The movie sometimes suffers from feeling more like a collection of scenes rather than a meticulously assembled argument. But, to be fair, the whole project seems so suffused in grief for Stewart that it's likely that rhetorical seamlessness was the last thing on the producers' minds.
Where the film excels is in its portrait of Stewart as a crusader who lives and breathes his cause. The first "Sharkwater" was released 13 years ago when Stewart was just 24, and made much more of the activist-star as a beautiful object, often posing him as if for a beefcake calendar. Any self-regard Stewart had later in life is largely invisible in the follow-up, which often depicts Stewart in action on land, arguing strategy, analyzing commercial products for evidence of shark meat, driving to docks where fins and shark carcasses are being loaded, unloaded or stored, and sneaking past security to capture the footage he needs to expose what's going on. His keen focus is sharklike. There are times when he seems to sense impending violence as one of his beloved hammerheads might sense motion tremors or smell prey.
The final section of the movie, which chronicles his final dive, is heartbreaking. Earlier in the movie, we hear a snippet of voice-over in which he insists that he knows the exact time and circumstances of his own death. It's a testament to the magic of editing that, when Stewart prepares to go in the water one last time, we wonder if his faint yet warm smile means he knows this is the end, or if he's always looks happy when he's about to go swimming with sharks.
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