At the start of each fishing season, ama gather to pray for safety and a bountiful harvest. In coastal shrines, they offer ...

Pearl oysters have historically been found in the Ise-Shima region, and ama are commonly described outside Japan – anachronistically – as “pearl divers”. However, harvesting of natural ...

The 69-year-old is among only 500 “ama” divers in Japan's rural Mie Prefecture, down from more than 4,000 such professionals in the 1970s. Across Japan, only about 2,000 ama divers are left.

Yoshino Uemura came late to the world of female “ama” divers, taking the plunge in her 40s. But now, over two decades later, she feels there is no time to lose if her chosen profession is to ...

Clad in wetsuits, ama divers submerge to great depths without air tanks to gather abalone, seaweed and other seafood, and sometimes pearls. They exist only in Japan and South Korea, but in the ...

is rated among the top 100 soundscapes of Japan. A diver adds an abalone to her floating basket during a demonstration at Mikimoto Pearl Island.Credit: iStock At one time, ama dived for Akoya ...

An ama skin diver catches fish on the seafloor, in Shima, Mie Prefecture. (Mainichi/Kenji Konoha) Yukio Mishima's novel "Shiosai" (The Sound of Waves), which depicts the pure love between a ...

Ago Bay lies beneath a rolling coastline lined with lush green trees in the Mie Prefecture of Japan ... of a young Ama who has taken it right from the water, while her fellow divers look ...

Japan's storied "ama" prayed for an abundant catch in a ceremony held by these female free divers for decades. This year, however, most of the 80 white-clad participants in the weekend event in ...

For centuries, women known as Ama divers have collected seafood off the coast of the Kii Peninsula without the use of breathing equipment. CNN meets some of the women carrying on this tradition.

The Ama are female freedivers who have gathered pearls, lobsters and shellfish in Japan's coastal waters for millennia, and who feature heavily in local folklore. There were some 6,000 of these ...