Haenyeo: The Last Mermaids: Jeju Island’s remarkable sisterhood of haenyeo, free-diving women, is on the edge of extinction:
Westerners have called them the last mermaids on earth. It’s an appropriate designation: These women divers plunge up to 65 feet into the ocean with nothing more than their lungs and a wet suit, and they may not be around much longer. But unlike Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, the haenyeo, or the women of the sea, aren’t teenagers. Most are grandmothers. True, their wrinkled faces have a story to tell, but it’s no fairy tale. For hundreds of years, the haenyeo have struggled to survive as the primary economic providers of Korea’s Jeju Island. But now, because of the danger inherent in free-diving and the changing tides of women in the workplace, the cherished tradition is in jeopardy.
