Rob Stewart, a photographer and diver obsessed with sharks since childhood, sets out to show them as balanced predators rather than monsters, and ends up documenting the industry that is wiping them out. He joins Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd crew off Costa Rica and the Galapagos, filming illegal finning boats that strip sharks of their fins for soup and dump the still-living bodies back in the water. The confrontation turns dangerous: Costa Rican poachers respond with attempted-murder charges against the crew, and Stewart films firsthand the corruption and violence protecting the trade, including a chase that ends with piracy charges in Guatemalan waters. Underwater footage of reef sharks, hammerheads, and whale sharks moving through open water sits next to the wreckage of finning operations, making the contrast between the animal and its reputation explicit. Stewart's own health collapses partway through from a flesh-eating disease contracted on location, and the film keeps going anyway, following the fin trade from the ocean to the market.