Japan - women of the sea

In a wooden hut at Satoumian, Kimijo hunches around the fire and my lunch arrives on a platter, still moving more than I’d like.
The air is thick with charcoal and iodine, and the conversation with Kimiyo swings between the traditions of the divers to the kind of husband gossip that needs no translation.

Along Japan’s Ise Shima Peninsula, ama divers disappear in the gelid Pacific without oxygen tanks, descending as deep as twenty metres to gather abalone, turban shells and seaweed by hand.
Their work is physically punishing, deeply communal and increasingly precarious, shaped by an ageing population, a changing sea and the stubborn pull that keeps drawing them back beneath the surface.