Custom & practice

Jeju Haenyeo

The women free-divers of Jeju Island, who harvest the sea floor on a single breath — a matrifocal working culture and a body of ecological knowledge held entirely in practice.

On the Korean island of Jeju, the haenyeo («sea women») dive into the cold sea with no breathing apparatus to gather abalone, sea urchins, conch and seaweed from the ocean floor. On a single held breath they descend as deep as ten metres, work, and surface with a distinctive whistling exhale — the sumbisori — that releases the held air. Many haenyeo keep diving into their sixties, seventies and beyond.

For centuries the haenyeo were the economic backbone of their households and villages, giving Jeju a rare semi-matrifocal working culture. They organized collectively, managed the harvest so as not to exhaust it, and at times took part in political protest. Their detailed knowledge — of tides, of sea life, of the limits of a safe dive — is learned in the water, by doing, and passed woman to woman, never from a manual.

The culture is now ageing and shrinking, and it is cherished as an emblem of Jeju identity; UNESCO inscribed the culture of the Jeju haenyeo on its Representative List. It is a vivid case of expert knowledge — ecological, physiological, social — that lives in trained bodies rather than in text.