These Korean women spend more time underwater than any other humans

On Jeju Island successful South Korea unrecorded women who dive heavy into the East China Sea. There, they harvest oversea urchins and shellfish. Known arsenic Haenyeo, oregon oversea women, they walk more clip underwater than immoderate different humans studied. That’s 1 to 5 hours a day.

Researchers shared their findings August 18 successful Current Biology.

“It’s arsenic adjacent arsenic you get to studying a mermaid,” says Chris McKnight. He’s a marine-mammal biologist astatine the University of St. Andrews successful Scotland.

McKnight is portion of a squad that worked with 7 Haenyeo divers. Over 1,786 dives, these women wore devices that monitored however agelong they stayed underwater. The devices besides measured however heavy the women dove. They adjacent tracked oxygen levels successful the women’s brains and muscles.

The women dove repeatedly for 2 to 10 hours each day. And they spent an mean of 56 percent of that clip beneath the surface. This is much clip than galore aquatic mammals walk underwater, the researchers say. That includes beavers, polar bears and oversea otters.

Chronicles of pistillate divers successful this portion of Asia day backmost 3,000 years. Researchers person studied immoderate of these divers successful the lab. McKnight’s squad wanted to show them successful a real-life setting. This caller survey enactment the women’s abilities into discourse with different water-dwelling mammals. Such probe could shed airy connected however the ancestors of whales and different marine mammals transitioned from onshore to water, McKnight says.

Surprising findings

The squad expected to spot debased oxygen levels and dilatory bosom rates successful the Haenyeo. That’s however different mammals person adapted to diving. Instead, it was the opposite. These women had elevated bosom rates. And oxygen levels successful their encephalon and muscles hardly decreased portion diving.

This astonishment mightiness beryllium explained by the benignant of the women’s dives. They don’t marque long, heavy dives, similar a whale might. Instead, dives by these women scope from 1 to 3 meters (three to 15 feet) deep. They mean conscionable 11 seconds successful length. These women marque tons of dives, surfacing for an mean of lone 9 seconds earlier diving again.

What makes their feats adjacent much awesome is the divers’ mean age: 70. “This speaks to an unthinkable wellness span,” says survey coauthor Melissa Ilardo. She’s an evolutionary geneticist astatine the University of Utah successful Salt Lake City. That “is truly exciting, due to the fact that we could truly excavation into what’s allowing that to beryllium imaginable successful this population,” she says.

Ilardo led a lab-based survey that compared the Haenyeo women with non-diving Koreans. The survey uncovered familial variations successful the Haenyeo. Those variations were associated with their humor unit arsenic good arsenic their ability to withstand acold water. That whitethorn lend to skillful diving. Ilardo and her colleagues reported this connected May 27 successful Cell Reports.

McKnight says that the Haenyeo besides whitethorn person adapted to tolerate precocious levels of c dioxide (CO₂). This state builds up successful the assemblage aft repeated enactment holds. Elevated CO₂ levels are “incredibly uncomfortable” for astir people, McKnight notes. They tin origin anxiousness and panic. He hopes to show the women’s CO₂ levels successful the future.

The Haenyeo’s foraging practices are akin to “a surface-oriented, shallow-diving marine mammal similar a oversea otter,” says Ted Cheeseman. A marine biologist, helium heads Happywhale. It’s an online photograph database of marine mammals. He did not instrumentality portion successful the caller study. Adaptations that let these women to walk much than fractional their clip underwater “really speaks to civilization driving evolution,” Cheeseman says.

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