A rare seafood experience in Japan you simply can't afford to miss

The woman preparing my barbecued seafood lunch is dressed all in white cotton. Her name is Miyuki, which means beautiful and happy. She appears to be both. On the menu today: tender squid, juicy scallops, turban shell snails, Ise spiny lobster, and barracuda that's been marinating in soy sauce and mirin.

Miyuki is an Ama diver of Japan's Ise-Shima region, one of the legendary "sea women" who have practised the art of free-diving for seafood and pearls for over 2000 years.

Ama divers wear white because it's believed to ward off sharks and keep them warm in the frigid water. It's a dangerous job, one that is traditionally female because women tend to have an extra layer of subcutaneous fat.

There were once thousands of Ama women, but the numbers have dwindled to several hundred, most of them over the age of 60. Miyuki bucks the trend as a younger woman, not born into a family of divers, who chose to leave her hometown of Osaka to join the dive tribe. During the winter low season, she hosts visitors for lunch or dinner in wooden huts like the one I'm sitting in.

Over a charcoal fire, Miyuki grills the local catch of the day and tells me stories of the sea: how in the past 10 years, her salary has shrunk because of global warming and smaller hauls. She dips a brush in seawater to create a salty sizzle on the hotplate, deftly handling a lobster that's so freshly caught it's still moving.