Diver Haenyeo Bashny.Net

Venue Edo island Jeju and the south of the Korean Peninsula.
Haenyeo - these older women dive into the cold waters without diving, disappear for a few minutes, and then appear on the surface of the water with a catch consisting of octopus, sea urchins and shellfish. They live off the production of marine life from the bottom of the sea.

17 Photo © David Hogsholt via amelito

It is believed that women in this region began to dive for pearls and sustenance of about 1,700 years ago. There are several explanations why only women dive here. For example, this - the island is not provided opportunities to engage in agriculture because of the lack of fertile land and weedy Asian men are not very suitable for diving for sea treasures in cold water, so it had to do more "rounded" to women. According to another version, the Korean men to pay more taxes on their income, therefore, to keep the family income, women do prey. Anyway, it does not matter, but there will soon reigned matriarchy and men are now stay at home on the farm and nyanchitsya children.

Unlike the rest of the Confucian Korea, while the birth of a girl in the family on the islands was a festive event. But over time, the situation began to change. The export of seafood in neighboring Japan, diver began to earn more and have their daughters could afford to go to college. At this point everything and broke. In addition, on the islands has increased the flow of tourists, husbands began to get a job, because little by little the island poured into the usual way of life of the rest of Korea. The latest generation of diver - it is women 50-65 years old, this pension in our understanding of age, rare age 40. The best years such as they are in the sea on the day was 30 thousand or more, but now no more than five thousand.

Sometimes diver two groups - those that dive from a boat and those that are immersed directly from the shore. They spend 4-5 hours in the water, then add up your catch in the overall basket are dealers who pay a lot of money by the way, and then share the revenue with each other, depending on who has caught much. It must be said that the weight of networks that Haenyeo raised from the seabed up to 50 kg, so that the work can rightly be called heavy.