I can hold my breath for 6 mins and dive to 525ft ..we're all just

SHE was 525ft down in the waters of the Caribbean, deeper than anyone had ever been before without breathing equipment.

And what did Tanya Streeter do there?

She paused to revel in it - the deep blue darkness, the absolute silence, the complete stillness.

Never mind the danger, and dizziness, and the crushing pressure in her ears and her chest.

She hung there in the ocean, the mythical mermaid come to life.

"I looked around me and I felt I was home," she says. "It was a mystical experience. I felt I was back at the place where all human beings came from long ago, and where we could all go back to, if we discovered the skills.

"Human life began in the sea. That's where we evolved, and we don't go as aliens."

Only a dedicated few enthusiasts go free-diving - that is, without an air supply. And Tanya, 28, is now their world champion.

The men's record depth had been 505ft, and the women's 446ft.

It took Tanya three minutes and 38 seconds to sweep past them both in her dive last week off the coast of Turks and Caicos Islands.

Fifteen seconds of that was the time she spent dallying underwater to enjoy the view, but really, she says, there was no need to rush - in training, she has held her breath for more than six minutes.

"At the end of a dive, I can release the air bag and be on my way back to the surface in three seconds flat. But this time I waited for 15 seconds, to save the experience in my memory.

"Then I blew a kiss to the sea, and headed back."

Free diving is a formidable sport. The body has to conquer both pain and fear.

Tanya takes a deep breath and then plunges downwards at six feet per second, riding on a weighted sledge attached to a rope.

At 200ft, her chest wall is being compressed, and blood and fluid is drawn into the shrinking lungs to support them.

"The same thing happens with whales and dolphins - we're no different," says Tanya.

At 300ft, she is no longer able to control the pressure in her ears. The pain from now on will be constant and excruciating.

Further still, 355ft, is the depth at which the men of the Russian submarine the Kursk were trapped and perished.

Tanya plummets on - at 400ft there is light-headedness and nausea, at 450ft she can start to suffer double vision and mental confusion.

When she has reached the bottom of the dive she has to collect a metal tag attached to the rope as proof that she has reached the measured depth. Then she triggers the air bags to lift her, and the rapid journey back to the surface is just as daunting.

A couple of times she has suffered blackouts, as the lungs expand again and her oxygen level drops. And yet, when this feat of endurance and courage is over, it's a petite blonde, 5ft7ins and eight-and-a-half stones, who emerges from the deep.

"People think free-divers must all be blokes with big biceps and beards," says her husband Paul, 42, her manager and trainer. You can't get further removed from that image than Tanya. Her secret is the fantastic ability to expand and contract her body. I always said her chest is her greatest asset."

Perhaps no couple have a greater bond of trust - it's Paul who ties the knot in the rope which stops the sledge. If he gets it wrong, Tanya goes hurtling into the abyss.

Back at their home in Austin, Texas, two hours from the nearest ocean, the neighbours are just coming to terms with the news that they have a world-beating adventurer living nearby.

They knew her, before this, as the well-mannered English woman, still with the trace of a Roedean public school accent, who loves gardening. What now? Will Tanya be drawn back to the sea to go deeper still? She doesn't think so.

The record will be beaten, she's sure of that, but not by her - she and Paul are keen to start a family.

"Motherhood wouldn't make me think about the risks of diving, because I think the risks are so well managed," she says. "But I would be committed to my children. I wouldn't be able to give myself 110 per cent to my sport.

"Someone will go deeper than me. Bound to. But I've achieved what I wanted to do"

Tanya met Paul nine years ago in Brighton, where she was taking a business studies course at college. She was working behind the bar of the Black Horse pub at Rottingdean, Sussex, and Paul tried to chat her up. "He's a 6ft 4ins ex-rugby player, so naturally I noticed him among the 65-year-olds in there," Tanya says.

"But I'm an old-fashioned kind of girl. We became friends, but no more than that for months and months.

"We would go to aerobics and he'd take me after work for an apple pie at the all-night McDonald's.

"Then we went to a rock 'n' roll evening, and danced together. The moment I touched him, things changed. Suddenly it was physical. I realised what I was missing."

They moved to Austin to join the dot.com industry and liked the lifestyle so much they stayed on when the bubble burst.

Tanya used to work as a secretary and her life could easily have taken a much more conventional course.

Then, five years ago when swimming and spear-fishing with friends, they saw how easily Tanya was able to hold her breath underwater, and suggested she should try free-diving.

The skill came from her childhood in the Cayman Islands, where her father ran a scuba supplies business and Tanya learned to swim before she could walk.

"I used to be an insecure person," she admits. "I'd walk into a room and just know there would be people in there who didn't like me.

"The other girls might go out partying. I was the one who stayed behind to clean my room - and their rooms as well, come to that.

"But now I've achieved an inner confidence. I've experienced something that others haven't. I've been there, and I've survived."

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