The LAST SEA WOMEN

Haenyeo - In Silence they Dive

by Raquel Rodrigues

eng

You inhale and you feel the salt in the air. The ocean sound, its waves, and the wind above it. You see the seashells on the shore and exhale. It’s all so peaceful and you are happy.

Imagine a world with less machines, less giant boats, less noise in the ocean – the noise that is polluting it and harming so many marine lives.

It is possible. Haenyeo, “sea women” in Korean, are female divers from Jeju, that are doing it for centuries. They dive in the ocean to collect a variety of mollusks, seaweed and other sea being, silently. To their work at the sea they call Muljil and there are registers about haenyeo work from 6th century that mention pearls being sent to the king as a gift.

Jeju is South Korea's largest island and its nature is so exuberant that it is considered a UNESCO World Natural Heritage, inviting many tourists now, as you may imagine.

But so impressive as the nature of the place is the work of these “sea women”, that started by helping their husbands, but by the 18th century they were already more than the men doing this job. Some say this may be due to the fact that in the 17th century a great number of men died in deep-sea fishing accidents or even in the war, forcing women to take their posts. Some official documents suggest that women took the place of men when the Korean king conscripted huge numbers of them into his army, but didn't give up on the request of large amounts of abalone to be sent to him as tribute. Women from Jeju had no option other than go to the sea, fearing recrimination and punishment.

It also can be explained by women physiology, since they have more subcutaneous fat and so, they are more able to bear up against the cold waters. Also, in the 18th century, there were taxes for common people collecting and trading abalone, having records of pregnant women diving to face this obstacle.

With the colonization of Japan, the work of the haenyeo started to be more lucrative and they started to receive wages and being hired by Japanese and Korean merchants. This made them one of the biggest incomes for the families and by the beginning of 1960s haenyeo harvests was 60% of Jeju's fisheries revenue (and 40% of haenyeo’s husbands weren’t working)

A matriarchal society started to develop, since so many people relied on the haenyeo, and they were at the head of the household. There were places where gender roles tradition was reversed, like Mara Island, for example, where the only income for the families was the sea diving, so it was no strange to see the man at home looking for their children and the woman would be in the sea and at the end of the day would get them the money they needed to survive.

You could find other reversed costumes, if we think of our own patriarchal society, that we’ve come to learn from young age on history books and school or life. In Jeju it was the men who paid a dowry to the bride and the families often celebrated a birth of a girl instead of a birth of a boy.

Even so, women were not seen as equals or more important than men. They had no space in political life nor could have their own business and they were mainly still seen as not as important and intelligent as men.

Although there are still haenyeos nowadays, the number decreased a lot, specially in the end of the 60’s. The industrialization and the tourism had the most effect in the haenyeo work. The mandarin oranges were a big boom and there was a need of hands for farming. Then the tourism with all its commerce and incomes involved brought some changes to the island too.

So, in 2014, 98% of haenyeo were more than 50 years old and the oldest “sea woman” was over 80 years old and she was diving for more than 66 years.

Their technique is developed with long training periods and a lot of experience. The tradition is that a girl would start the training to be a haenyeo around 11 years old and after 7 years of training, after passing from shallow waters to the deeper sea, only then she would be a haenyeo. This is a job that can start at 15 years old and goes up to their 80s.

To work as a haenyeo they have to be perfect in many skills, such as being able to be underwater for long periods, feel the pressure of the water and the quantity of the oxygen they still have left and also the distance they have to do to the superficies of the water. They can either enter in the shore, swimming, or by boat.

Haenyeo started diving with cotton wetsuits and so they could only be in water for 1 hour at a time, special in winter. When they went out of water, they would spend 3 hours by the fire to get warm, so they could go to the water once again. In the summer months, they would stay up to 3 hours in the water before the breaks for warming up.

Then, when wetsuits were invented, they increased the time in the water, up to 6 hours at a time. They also have now a set of tools that is very helpful. Other than the wetsuit they use a diving mask and fins, gloves, chest weights, and a net (where they put what they cached).

When they dive, they go down up to 30 meters deep. If you’re wondering for how long they can hold their breath, that’s around 3 minutes.

Sumbisori is what they call to the sound they do when they come to the surface and inhale the oxygen, making a whistling. They take that time to exhale the carbon dioxide they got by being submerged for 2/3 minutes underwater and inhale new fresh air full of oxygen for the next swim. Their lung capacity is really strong, and also impressive is their capacity to adapt to the iced waters.

It's not only about swimming and strong lungs. They have a great knowledge about the ocean, the tides and the winds. They also can identify the geography of the ocean and its habitats, flora and fauna, since it’s indispensable for their work to be well done, making them experts of everything that is involved with the ocean.

The haenyeo never work alone - team work is essential to be safe. Also they have small communities and they work together to accomplish their commitment of preserve the marine ecosystem. 

They believe that nature is not just their “work place” but a precious place to preserve and that’s why they teach the next generations to preserve the environment and they are big advocates of ecology as well as specialists of the ocean.

Other than all of this, they also play an important role model in gender equality by being so independent of society and the domestic economy alongside men, since many years ago.

Yes, ocean can be silent and safe for the animals that inhabit in it. We can learn with haenyeo example, who show us not only that we all can respect one another, but also the planet and all animals living in it.