Swimming with Shark Girl - PHOTO+VIDEO

As her alias suggests, the 20-year-old's lifestyle is anything but ordinary having swum with sharks since the age of seven. Her love for the deep blue sea and the widely feared predators down under has seen her sacrifice her family, friends and school in order to dedicate her life to fight for the deadly creatures.The shark girl, who grew up in Byron Bay in northeastern NSW, made the life changing decision when she picked up her first underwater camera at the age of 14.'I began noticing a significant decline in sharks,' she told Daily Mail Australia.'Now I'm at a stage of my life where I don't even know if they'll be around when I'm older.'That's why I left school, left my family, left my friends to be in the water.'All I had was the ocean in my life.'And while she's evolved into an independent film-maker, hoping to chance attitudes towards sharks in Australia, she's determined set the record straight – she's no activist nor conservationist. 'I'm just an average person doing what they believe in,' Madison said.'This is not my occupation and you cannot make money doing what I do.'I do it because I love sharks and if I could quit tomorrow I would but not while bad things are going undocumented in our oceans.'Madison's deep connection with the underwater world is one that she feels with no other being or element in the world.'I feel totally calm and at home. I'm at peace,' she said.'Sharks are so very different to other causes in the sense I am not just trying to raise awareness but I am also facing the task of sparking respect and love for a creature demonised since it was first depicted in the media.'I need people to feel the same way about sharks that I do so they can feel the same pain I do in the face of their destruction.'Now she's quite blasé when it comes to swimming with sharks.'It's not an adrenalin rush for me because it’s just normal,' Madison said.So far, she's fearlessly swum alongside great whites, hammer heads and tiger sharks.'They're not harmful animals,' she said.Everyone hates sharks, everyone wants them dead. But they are my family and no one is sticking up for them.'Madison believes this is the underlying issue that needs to be addressed by the Australian government s there's an 'increasing gap between fear and understanding'.'Things that are legal in our oceans are so unjust,' she said, referring the legal fisheries and culling in Australia.'Education is a way to help prevent dangerous situation with sharks, not killing them.'At the age of 19, she featured in a film - aptly entitled 'Shark Girl' - which shed light on Australia's shark-meat trade.The documentary was released in June this year.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.az