Tanya Streeter (bornTanya Dailey,[1] 10 January 1973,Grand Cayman) is a British-Caymanian-American[2] world championfreediver, inducted into theWomen Divers Hall of Fame in March 2000.
For more than two months, from 17 August 2002,[3] she held the overall "No Limit" freediving record (greater than the men's record) with a depth of 525 feet (160 m), which is still the women's world record forNLT (No Limit) Apnea.
Streeter was born to Jim and Sandra Dailey in theCayman Islands. She has two sisters and a brother. She was educated in England at the independent girls' schoolRoedean and atBrighton University. She met and married her husband Paul Streeter in England.[4] They moved to the Cayman Islands in 1995[1] and have a daughter and a son. After giving birth Tanya Streeter officially retired from freediving. She currently resides in Austin, Texas. Tanya also has four step children residing in the UK.
Streeter took up freediving at age 25 and almost immediately began to break records.[1] She made her first important breakthrough in 1998 when she betteredDeborah Andollo's Women's AIDA NLT (No Limit) diving record by 10 feet, achieving a total depth of 370 feet (113 m). She was inducted into theWomen Divers Hall of Fame in March 2000. In 2002, she broke the men'sAIDA International'sNLT (No Limit) world diving record by diving to a depth of 525 feet (160 m) near theTurks and Caicos Islands, a record which was surpassed later that year byFrench diverLoïc Leferme (162 m).[5]
On 19 July 2003 she broke the men'sVariable Weight (VWT) world record by diving to a depth of 400 feet (122 m)[6] and held it over a year until the record was broken byCarlos Coste (135 m) inPuerto la Cruz, Venezuela on 27 October 2004. However, as a women's record, it lasted almost seven years, untilNatalia Molchanova reached 125 m in June 2010 inKalamata, Greece.[3]
Streeter was featured in anAnimal Planet documentary,Freediver (aired March 2006), and presentedDive Galapagos (aired March 2007). She presented a documentary shown onBBC Two calledShark Therapy in which she attempted to overcome her fear of sharks. She is a public speaker, presenting "The Deepest Dive Ever" atTEDx inAustin, Texas in 2012, and also at theDivers Alert NetworkUHMS DAN 2006 Breath-hold Proceedings. She appeared on a set of five commemorative postage stamps distributed by the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2003.[6] In 2014, she appeared as a coach on the television showCalzedonia Ocean Girls. She also features in the documentaryA Plastic Ocean (aired 2016), and today focuses on her work as an environmentalist.
