Wed, Jul 08, 2015 page5

• FEATURE: Seven stalwarts maintain the ‘sea woman’ tradition

  • By Yu Chao-fu and Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  With only seven of the nation’s female divers known as hainu (sea women) still active, it seems that their profession will soon be consigned to the history of northern Taiwan.

  Several of the elderly hainu — who collect plants and animals from the sea without using breathing apparatus — said they still harvest pebble plants between the third month and the fifth month of the lunar calendar in waters off New Taipei City’s Yehliu Geopark (野柳地質公園), as they have done since they were young girls.

  The fishing villages scattered along the shore of Yehliu were home to about 50 hainu in the 1960s and 1970s, they said.

  

  A hainu bends down to collect pebble plants in Keelung on June 29.

  Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times

  Pebble plants — plants that camouflage themselves by mimicking the surrounding rocks — can be dried, boiled and made into jelly — a local specialty that is sold in stores at Yehliu Geopark.

  Saying that collecting and processing pebble plants is just one of their sources of income, 76-year-old hainu Hsu Tsai Mei-chueh (許蔡梅雀) said they also harvest abalone, sea snails and sea urchins.

  Hainu regard the ocean as their bank and they plunge into the water to make withdrawals if they are running low on cash, Hsu Tsai said.

  

  Diver Hsu Tsai Mei-chueh, 76, stands in a wetsuit and diving gear on a shore in Keelung on June 14.

  Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times

  The stretch of coast between the park and Guihou Harbor (龜吼漁港) is their main field of operations, she said.

  A bag of freshly harvested pebble plants weighing about 30 jin (18kg) weighs only 5 jin after drying, she said.

  Dried pebble plants are sold at about NT$500 per jin, a price that has dropped over the years and is lower than the price they could get for sea urchins or fat choy, she said. Fat choy is a type of edible algae that looks like human hair when dried.

  The hainu who still dive do so only in the pebble plant’s growing season in the spring and summer, when the water temperature is more than 20°C, she said.

  Hsu Tsai described collecting marine products in the winter 30 years ago as an arduous task, saying there was no cold-water wetsuits and they would wear sweaters, swimming caps and pants.

  They worked in water temperatures of less than 10°C and would tremble with cold, she said, adding that they could only work for 30 minutes at a time in such cold.

  After coming back onshore, the fierce sea wind blew against their soaking clothes and wet skin and their teeth would chatter, she said.

  They would make fires with driftwood and warm themselves for half an hour before heading back into the ocean for another freezing dive that could not be longer than 20 minutes, she said.

  The process would be repeated until they had harvested enough products and could go home, she said.

  The hardship of winter diving was nothing compared with the challenge of harvesting fat choy from reefs at low tide, she said.

  Fat choy had to be snatched up from reefs as the tide receded and their workspace would be regularly lashed by 4m-high waves.

  As they harvested fat choy they would look out to sea and if they spotted a large wave heading their way they would scamper for their lives, she said.

  However, the reward was worth the risk, as dried wild fat choy fetched NT$3,200 per jin in the 1960s and 1970s, she said.

  She said that there were two groups of hainu at the fishing villages in Yehliu and Houou (後澳), but the practice has gradually faded out as their children grew up and began taking care of their own families in different ways.

  Her children and grandchildren urge her to retire, Hsu Tsai said, but she does not feel right about quitting the business she has been active in all her life.

  Masu Fishing Village Association director Lin Sung-yao (林松堯) said that the oldest hainu is more than 80 years old and the youngest 70.

  The hainu have made great contributions to Yehliu, but the tradition would most likely disappear, Lin said.

  The authorities should collect and publish the oral history of the hainu to remember their stories, he said.
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