MONTEREY, California (29 Apr 2006) -- It could happen again someday. But don't hold your breath. After all, until Friday morning, it hadn't happened for more than a century. And even Emiko Yoshida and Reiko Miyamoto can't hold their breath that long. The stars of Friday's show at Whaler's Cove at Point Lobos, Yoshida and Miyamoto hold their breath professionally. They're "ama" -- Japanese for women divers -- and they make their living in Japan "free diving" for abalone and other seafood. That is, they use only their own lung power, no breathing gear, in dives that typically last about 80 seconds. Their abalone diving exhibition at Whaler's Cove Friday, the opening event of the Abalone Festival and Symposium 2006, was the first free diving anyone had done there since 1897. "Back then, three divers went into the water and came out very quickly," said Sandy Lydon, historian emeritus at Cabrillo College and director of the festival. "They said very politely, 'We're not going back in there.'" Yoshida and Miyamoto were a tad wiser than those guys. They weren't sure they wanted to go into Whaler's Cove at all when they were first invited to the event. That is because they knew what the earlier divers had to discover for themselves: The water temperature is 17 to 18 degrees lower here than in Japan. "When the women heard how cold it was, they questioned coming," said Kurt Loesch, historian for the Whaler's Cabin at Point Lobos. "It wasn't until they were told they could have wet suits made for them that they would come." Full-body wet suits made of heavy-grade material, that is. In Japan, ama generally wear thin wet suits that cover only the upper body. And even those are a big change from traditional white cotton outfits that provided little in the way of warmth -- or in the way of cover either, because they became semi-transparent when wet. Actually, until the 1890s, the ama dived topless. And, of course, they also dived maskless and flipperless in those days. Except for the changes in equipment and dress, Japanese free diving has stayed basically the same during the past 1,500 years, according to a 1998 article in "Michigan Today" by anthropologist Bethany Grenald. She met Yoshida and Miyamoto when she was in Japan studying the ama for her dissertation and dived with them Friday. Unchanged are the tools -- short and long "awabigane" -- that the ama carry with them to pry abalone loose from the rocks they cling to for dear life. Also unchanged is the "hanzo" -- a wooden float that looks like a bushel basket bobbing on the water as it marks the spot where an ama dived. Besides using her hanzo to "keep her place," an ama can rest on it between dives. She also hangs a "sukari" -- or net basket -- under it, where she stores each dive's catch. Yoshida and Miyamoto carried awabigane. Both had a hanzo with a sukari attached. But they only really used their hanzo. That is because they were diving for what Lydon emphasized were "artificial, imitation, faux abalone" because it's illegal to dive for real ones in these parts. "Are you sure we can't take the abalone?" the ama asked at first, being unfamiliar with the idea of an "underwater reserve." Lydon assured them he was very, very sure. Abalone have legal protection here because they were overfished early in the 20th century. Before that, Lydon said, "divers described the ocean bottom as being carpeted with abalone. There were whale skeletons on the bottom, and the skeletons themselves were covered with abalone." Overfishing happened here -- and not in Japan -- because in Japan they stuck to free diving, and here they didn't. Ama divers in Shirahama in 1956. | | Ama diver in Onjuku, Chiba in the late 1961. After the three 1897 divers came up from the cold, Lydon said, "They sent for helmet divers to come in 1898." The helmets had compressed air, which made diving a lot easier. The ama used them in Japan, too, for a little while. But they were soon banned because officials didn't want diving to be all that easy. It was their way of conserving their ocean resources, Grenald wrote. No one would call the life of an ama one bit easy. In her article, said Grenald -- who learned to dive in Monterey Bay -- "I was awed at their courage and spirit, as women as much as 40 years older than I would gamely slog through nauseating waves, between great rocks, in conditions that my old dive instructors in Northern California might quail at the prospect of swimming in." Yoshida and Miyamoto are examples of such older women. Yoshida began diving when she was 12 years old and has been diving for 60 years. Miyamoto, her younger sister, is a relative "novice" with only 50 years under her belt. There are some men divers in Japan. In fact, the divers who came to Whaler's Cove in 1897 were men. But most divers are women, probably because, studies have shown, women are physiologically better able to cope with the cold. The two-day celebration of abalone that began Friday and continues today at the Custom House Plaza has been in the works since August, said Tim Thomas, historian and director of public programs for the Maritime Museum of Monterey. Yoshida and Miyamoto came to Monterey -- it is their first time leaving Japan -- just for the festival. They arrived Thursday and will return home Sunday. After all, Japan's abalone season begins Monday. A number of people watched the diving Friday morning with special interest. Among them were descendants of the Kodani family, Japanese-Americans who grew up watching the divers at Point Lobos. Also in the crowd were Dave Doelter Mason and his mother Rae Mason Gilmore. Mason is the great grandson of Pop Ernest Doelter, who ran a popular restaurant -- it was called Pop's -- at the foot of Fisherman's Wharf many years ago. "He's the one who figured out how to pound abalone to make it softer so people could eat it," Gilmore said. Or, as Mason put it, "He invented the abalone steak." And then there was Roy Hattori. Now 87, he was a helmet diver here in the late 1930s -- the only one who was an American-born Japanese. He remembers all too well how cold the water was. "This is not the Japanese current," he said. He also remembers when the bottom of Whaler's Cove was "solid with abalone." Friday morning, the visibility was poor, Grenald said, and there was a lot of seaweed. For those and perhaps other reasons, the closest thing to a live abalone anyone saw was a solitary shell. SOURCE - Monterey Herald |
