These spellbinding photos capture the ‘mermaid’ divers of South Korea | CNN

After spending several days with the Haenyeo, a group of women on South Korea’s Jeju Island renowned for harvesting seafood from the ocean floor without scuba gear, photographer Peter Ash Lee said one conversation — with one of the youngest of the island’s “freedivers” — stood out from the rest.

“Her biggest concern was the fact that this tradition was ending,” Lee told CNN of Ko Ryou-jin, a third-generation Haenyeo. “She was speaking to me in Korean, and said, ‘I’m going to be the last one.’ Then she said, in English, ‘I’m the last mermaid.’”