Mehgan Heaney-Grier | |
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| Born | Mehgan Renee Heaney August 26, 1977 |
| Occupation(s) | Fashion model, free-diver |
Mehgan Heaney-Grier (born Mehgan Renee Heaney; August 26, 1977) is an American champion freediver, fashion model, actress, conservationist, and TV personality. [1] [2]
Heaney-Grier was born in Duluth, Minnesota to Bill and Renee Heaney. Her parents divorced when she was six years old. [3] When she was eleven years old her mother remarried to Nelson Grier and in the summer of 1989, Heaney-Grier, along with her sister Erin, mother and new stepfather moved to the Florida Keys. When she was 16 years old, she legally changed her last name to Heaney-Grier.
In 1996 at the age of 18 Heaney-Grier established the first constant weight free-diving record in the United States with a dive to 155 feet (47 meters) on a single breath of air. The following year she beat her own record with a dive to 165 feet (50 meters), [4] [5] When she set her second US record, the women's world record for free diving was 204.5 feet (62.3 meters). [3]
In 1998 Heaney-Grier captained the first United States Freediving Team to compete in the World Cup Freediving Championships held in Sardinia, Italy. [6] In 2000, Heaney-Grier was inducted as part of the inaugural roster into the Women Divers Hall of Fame. [4]
Heaney-Grier has modeled for, and been featured in, numerous catalogs and magazines including People, Outside, Life, Vogue Japan, Abercrombie & Fitch. She has also been a public relations ambassador for Omega Watches. [7]
In the late 1990s, Heaney-Grier partnered with her diving trainers, Manny Puig and Mark Rackley (who was at the time also Heaney-Grier's boyfriend), filming underwater encounters with animals such as alligators and sharks. [8] Rackley had worked as a spearfisherman and underwater videographer, [3] and Puig had experience as an animal handler on movie sets [3] and had learned how to ride and handle alligators in their environment. [8] Together with Heaney-Grier, they formed a company named Extreme Encounters, and the footage they produced led to the Animal Planet series titled Extreme Contact. [3] The 20-episode series featured the trio in cage-free encounters with sharks, alligators and other aquatic wildlife. [9] They also worked on a USA Network one-hour special titled "Deep Diver: Tiger Shark Odyssey". [2] In 2002, Heaney-Grier went on to other projects. [2]
In 1999 Heaney-Grier had a guest-starring role as a free-diver on an episode of Baywatch, and a starring role on a UPN movie of the week, Avalon:Beyond the Abyss, produced by Viacom Productions. Heaney-Grier has been a featured guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, London's TFI Friday, Primetime Live with Anderson Cooper and Ripley's Believe it or Not. Heaney-Grier also hosted Saturn's Gravity Files, covering the Gravity Games in 2004, and the Mad Fin Shark Series for ESPN in 2008.
In 2015 Heaney-Grier co-starred as a member of a 5-person exploration team on the reality show Treasure Quest: Snake Island , which documents the search for the legendary Treasure of the Trinity on Snake Island, Brazil.
In 2003, Heaney-Grier was sought by the director of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Gore Verbinski, to perform an underwater stunt for Keira Knightley. [10] Heaney-Grier has also performed underwater stunts, including scuba diving, free diving and working with sharks, as a stunt double for Jessica Alba and Ashley Scott in Into the Blue, and for actress Olivia Wilde in Turistas.
Heaney-Grier was featured in the books A Family of Women by Carolyn Jones. [11] and Freedive! by Terry Maas and David Sipperly, [12]
Heaney-Grier married Silas Binkley on June 6, 2010. For seven years she has been the guardian of a rescued wolf-dog hybrid named Rontu, [10] and they are in the process of becoming a registered team for animal-assisted therapy work. Heaney-Grier graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2011 with both a B.A. degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a B.A. in Anthropology. [4] [13] They have one child together, Cash, born 2013.
Tanya Streeter is a British-Caymanian-American world champion freediver, inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in March 2000.
Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
Diving activities are the things people do while diving underwater. People may dive for various reasons, both personal and professional. While a newly qualified recreational diver may dive purely for the experience of diving, most divers have some additional reason for being underwater. Recreational diving is purely for enjoyment and has several specialisations and technical disciplines to provide more scope for varied activities for which specialist training can be offered, such as cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving and deep diving. Several underwater sports are available for exercise and competition.
Audrey Mestre was a French world record-setting freediver.
Mandy-Rae Cruickshank is a world champion free-diver and record-holder from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Scuba Schools International (SSI) is a for-profit organization that teaches the skills involved in scuba diving and freediving, and supports dive businesses and resorts. SSI has over 2,500 authorized dealers, 35 regional centers, and offices all over the world.
The 1992 cageless shark-diving expedition was the world's first recorded intentionally cageless dive with great white sharks, contributing to a change in public opinions about the supposed ferocity of these animals.
Freediving blackout, breath-hold blackout, or apnea blackout is a class of hypoxic blackout, a loss of consciousness caused by cerebral hypoxia towards the end of a breath-hold dive, when the swimmer does not necessarily experience an urgent need to breathe and has no other obvious medical condition that might have caused it. It can be provoked by hyperventilating just before a dive, or as a consequence of the pressure reduction on ascent, or a combination of these. Victims are often established practitioners of breath-hold diving, are fit, strong swimmers and have not experienced problems before. Blackout may also be referred to as a syncope or fainting.
Natalia Vadimovna Molchanova was a Russian champion free diver, multiple world record holder, and the former president of the Russian Free Dive Federation. She has been described as "possibly the world’s greatest freediver".
Manny Puig is a Cuban-born American wildlife entertainer who is known for his encounters with dangerous animals such as sharks, black bears and American alligators. He has made frequent appearances on the television shows Jackass and Wildboyz and also on the Animal Planet show Gator Boys. He is also known for hosting Outdoor Channel's "Savage Wild".
Francisco Rodriguez, better known as Francisco 'Pipin' Ferreras is a Cuban free-diver known for his achievements in deep free diving and his relationship with his wife, Audrey Mestre.
Deborah Andollo Lopez, also known as Deborah Andollo, is a Cuban free-diving athlete who held several world records in different disciplines. In 1996, she set a free-diving record of about 357 feet. On the "AIDA website’s world record history in both constant weight and No-Limits. In 1996 she excelled in constant 61 metres (200 ft) and no-limits 110 metres (360 ft), and did 100 metres (330 ft) in variable weight in Italy.
In underwater diving, ascending and descending is done using strict protocols to avoid problems caused by the changes in ambient pressure and the hazards of obstacles near the surface such as collision with vessels. Diver certification and accreditation organisations place importance on these protocols early in their diver training programmes. Ascent and descent are historically the times when divers are injured most often when failing to follow appropriate procedure.
No-limit apnea is an AIDA International freediving discipline of competitive freediving, also known as competitive apnea, in which the freediver descends and ascends with the method of his or her choice. Often, a heavy metal bar or "sled" grasped by the diver descends fixed to a line, reaching great depths. The most common ascension assistance is via inflatable lifting bags or vests with inflatable compartments, which surface rapidly. The dives may be performed head-first or feet-first.
Flavia Dias Eberhard, known as Flavia Eberhard, is a Brazilian free-diver, presenter of TV series "APNEIA", freediving instructor trainer, international fashion and underwater model, conservationist, and TV personality. She has nine freediving records including a South American Absolute Record on the discipline of free immersion. Eberhard also works with underwater videography and underwater photography with Sea Dragons audiovisual and has presented documentaries for the TV and film festivals.
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater divers:
This is a list of underwater divers whose exploits have made them notable. Underwater divers are people who take part in underwater diving activities – Underwater diving is practiced as part of an occupation, or for recreation, where the practitioner submerges below the surface of the water or other liquid for a period which may range between seconds to order of a day at a time, either exposed to the ambient pressure or isolated by a pressure resistant suit, to interact with the underwater environment for pleasure, competitive sport, or as a means to reach a work site for profit or in the pursuit of knowledge, and may use no equipment at all, or a wide range of equipment which may include breathing apparatus, environmental protective clothing, aids to vision, communication, propulsion, maneuverability, buoyancy and safety equipment, and tools for the task at hand.
Valerie May Taylor AM is a conservationist, photographer and filmmaker, and an inaugural member of the diving hall-of-fame. With her husband Ron Taylor, she made documentaries about sharks, and filmed sequences for films including Jaws (1975).
Estrella Navarro-Holm is a marine biologist, model, and national record-holding free diver from Mexico. She is the first Latin American woman to win a free diving medal for holding a single breath for more than six minutes.
Cristina Zenato is an Italian-born shark diver and conservationist. She is known for her work with Caribbean reef sharks in The Bahamas.
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