Family and Friends 6 (Reading 2)

The life of a free-diver

Tanya Streeter grew up on Grand Cayman Island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. When she was a child, she Loved being in the sea and she spent as much time as possible in the water, snorkelling and studying fish and other sea life. She also liked diving deep down into the ocean to look for rocks and shells. Tanya had a natural love of diving and one day, she discovered a sport she could do.

The sport was called free-diving. Thousands of years ago, people dived deep into the oceans to catch fish and to look for pearls. But they didn't have any diving equipment to help them breathe in those days. Today, this kind of diving has become a popular sport. People dive as deep as possible with no breathing equipment. They stay under the water for as long as they can and try to break world records.

Tanya had one lesson in free-diving and found out that she was very talented. She had more lessons and then started to enter competitions and compete against people from all over the world. In 1998, she broke her first world record when she dived 113 metres down into the ocean. She broke many more records after that. Tanya trains for four or five hours every day in the gym and in the pool. But the freedom she feels when she's free-diving makes it worth

Tanya is also interested in looking after the environment and protecting wildlife. She has worked hard to tell the world about the problems that whales and dolphins have with sea pollution and how dangcrous it is for them. She has appeared in videos, swimming with whales, and has also become a popular TV presenter.