Her school is the ocean and her pupils are sharks, but when Madison (Pip) Stewart noticed her friends were rapidly disappearing, the 17-year-old took to her video camera as a way to show the world the beauty in the beast.

The passionate conservationist said educating society is the key, but admits she faces a tough task because “the media love a shark attack”.

“Sharks kill about five people world-wide a year and we kill about 100 million sharks,” said Madison.

“73 million of those are just killed solely for their fins, so if it were the other way around and they were publishing stories on that I’m sure there would be a different outlook on sharks.”

“There are legal shark fisheries inside the Great Barrier Reef where they take 600tons of shark a year and they take the fins off, but it’s legal because they keep the body, so it’s been justified and they call it sustainable, but it’s not.”

“The populations are down by 90% in some areas of the Great Barrier Reef.”

Pip has produced a number of mesmerising documentaries (see her latest above) that provide a unique and inspiring insight into this largely misunderstood animal. 

While it may appear the young Byron Bay resident is completely fearless, she said it is more about knowing what you’re dealing with.

“I don’t get scared underwater with sharks, I know too much about them to get scared, I know they’re not going to hurt me and if they are getting angry I can tell, and I’ve spent enough time underwater with them to know I’m safe down there with them, which isn’t to say you don’t be cautious,” she said.

“They are actually one of the most predictable animals on the planet and it’s so twisted the truth about them… they’re nothing like what people see.”

Pip said her affection for sharks began when she was very young, watching documentaries, but her passion and calling was only realised more recently.

“I knew about shark finning and all the bad things happening to them, but it didn’t concern me that much, because everywhere I went - I started diving when I was 11 - there were lots of sharks in the water.

“I went to the most unbelievable places and then when I was 14 years old, passion kind of took over and I left school, I started home schooling.”

“It was my dad’s idea, cause he said he’d get me an underwater video camera ‘and we can travel and you can start filming’, I thought great, so we’d go back to all these places where I used to see sharks when I was little and I could film them and show people, it would be great, and we went back and they’d gone from the area.”

“The sharks I grew up with were disappearing in such a quick time. The numbers had decreased and I knew a lot about them, they were home-range sharks, so they didn’t move from the one area.”

“They’d been fished out basically and the population wasn’t replaced and these were areas inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.”

“Everything I do now is not actually what I intended to do, all my films on conservation, having to put footage of sharks being finned in my films, that’s not what I originally had in mind, but it just kind of went that way when the oceans went that way.”

Pip has experienced days that few her age or any age could imagine.

Whether diving with reef sharks, silver tips, hammerheads, you name it, she’s done it – and all with no mesh, no cage and in open waters.

The 17-year-old has traveled half way around the world in an effort to expose the injustices brought to her sharp-toothed friends.

Pip said if she could share one piece of advice it would that “you don’t have to love sharks, you need to respect them.”

“We’re facing now literally world war three, but it’s to do with the environment and the enemy is ourselves.”

“It’s devastating what’s happening to the oceans and if there’s any hope in the future it’s got to stop and you’ve got to understand sharks.”

“It’s happening more and more, but this generation with Jaws and everything were raised to fear sharks, but the next won’t survive unless we raise them to fear for them.”

“Once you understand things like that you understand the environment, which we rely on.”

A self-taught filmmaker - all of her videos are shot and edited by her.

To view more of Pip's videos head to http://www.youtube.com/user/elements5pip and remember to vote for her videos where possible if you'd like to help ensure the future conservation of sharks.