https://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/Utility/GetImage.ashx?ImageID=c4e3d974-2f87-4d3c-824c-90824c1023bd&refreshStamp=0
At last, after days on the South Korean island of Jeju waiting for conditions, I am out at sea with a group of the haenyeo. The open fishing boat cuts through mirror-calm waters just after dawn. There is little sound but the chug of the engine and the excited chatter of the 10 or so women as they make ready for their dive. I sit and listen to their stories, told in a language I cannot understand, but the women have already made me feel at home among them and nobody minds the click of my camera’s shutter.
Each of the haenyeo has a tewak: a collection net attached to a large orange float, and I imagine what the nets will look like when swollen with a treasure of glistening shells in a few hours’ time. Sooner than I expect, the tewaks have been thrown overboard and now the floats bob on the surface, marking each diver’s patch. Then the haenyeo follow. The women – most of whom are grandmothers – are up and over the gunwale in moments, and I marvel at their efficiency. They have had a lot of practice, over many decades.
I look over the side. Their neoprene-clad heads look a little like seals, slick with water, until I catch the glint of early morning light on the glass of a dive mask, breaking the illusion. One of the women waves to me; I wave back. A haunting whistling sound rises up in the silence of the morning. It sounds almost like the warbling call of a colony of seabirds, but I realise at once that they are hyperventilating, saturating their blood with oxygen before diving metres down to the life-rich seabed where they will begin their search for marine organisms.
The whistling stops. The women dive. Fins kick skyward and they are gone.
https://www.sidetracked.com/women-of-the-sea/