No woman has been this deep before: Tanya Streeter holds the world freediving record of 160 meters. In a special September 2005 edition of “Outside Magazine” she was named one of today’s 20 greatest athletes in adventure sports.
“Even as a kid I wanted to know how fish felt,” says Tanya Streeter. In Tanya’s case, this generally took the form of swimming around beneath the ocean surface until her young skin started to look more like that of a 90-year-old. But the conditions for young Tanya’s fish fixation could have been worse: she grew up in Grand Cayman, in the Caribbean, where the closeness to water is both a physically and a philosophically important aspect of life.
That this little girl, who was always the one who could duck-dive for the deepest sea shells, became the world’s top female freediver was something of a coincidence. “At some point I just realized that I had a talent for diving,” she says. ‘At some point’? When Tanya started freediving, she was almost 25. Within a few months after discovering her extraordinary talent she set an astounding four records, including an absolute (men’s and women’s) world record of 113 meters in the “No-Limits” discipline. That was 1998.
160 Meters with no Air
Numerous other records quickly fell, including two that no other woman has been able to top: in 2002 she dove to a depth of 160 meters in the “No-Limits” category (in which the diver slides down a cable on a weighted sled and ascends via a method of his/her choice). Never before had a human made such a deep descent without a breathing device. It wasn’t until 2004 that a man succeeded in going even deeper: at the beginning of that year the Frenchman Loïc Leferme achieved 171 meters.
In July 2003 Tanya also set the absolute world record of 122 meters in the “Variable Weight” category. In this discipline, the freediver descends with the help of a weighted sled but returns to the surface under his/her own power (arms and/or legs) with the option of pulling on the rope. Only in spring 2005, Martin Stepanek from the Czech Republic was able to establis a new record (136 m) in the men’s category.
Part of the Ocean
What drives Tanya Streeter into the depths? After all, freediving has its risks, and you can’t ignore them, as Tanya admits: “Way down deep it’s very dark, and on top of that you aren’t able to breathe. You can’t allow yourself to panic, but at the same time I’m no stranger to the feeling of fear.” She also is no stranger to the feeling of “Wow, look at what you’re capable of!” And this is the feeling that dominates.
Tanya’s favorite place in the word is not a geographical location; it’s simply “50 meters under water. It doesn’t matter where. I become one with the ocean, a part of it. That’s the greatest thing of all.”
Ambassador of the Undersea World
Tanya Streeter is intelligent, beautiful, successful and thus comes across well in the media. And she uses this advantage in her own way: she promotes the conservation of the oceans and their inhabitants, raises awareness, gives talks and is involved in fundraising campaigns. To aid a good cause, she has also been known to dive off the coast of the Dominican Republic with humpback whales, an extremely endangered species.
This much success and commitment naturally comes with honors and awards: in 2000 Tanya was inducted into the “Women Divers Hall of Fame,” and two years later “Sports Illustrated” magazine named her “The World’s Most Perfect Athlete.” And in September 2005 the renowned “Outside Magazine,” in its special “Faces” edition, called her one of the 20 greatest athletes competing in adventure sports today. Somewhat more modest is what Tanya calls herself: the Ambassador of Freediving.