Ancient fish traps in a Vancouver Island estuary

Reminds me of Australia, the first European explorers going across the mountains that the line the coast came across vast networks of trenched eel traps branching off from various waterways made by an indigenous community and similarly abandoned. Later investigative work show it dated to ~6600-8000yrs ago:

> He found extensive fish-trapping systems, with hundreds of metres of excavated channels and dozens of basalt block dam walls, the volume of which he estimated at "many hundreds of tonnes".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budj_Bim_heritage_areas#Eel_tr...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/23/budj-bim...

See also: the wool dogs of the coast Salish

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-dogs-that-grew-wo...

My favorite ancient fish trap is the Double-Heart Of Stacked Stones on the coast of Taiwan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Heart_of_Stacked_Stones...

The shape of traps is also similar to the pre historic desert kites of Middle East to hunt wild animals on land https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/09/the-mysterious-desert-...

I was just there for a couple of weeks visiting my partner’s family in Comox.

Her mother was telling us a bit about the work in the estuary while we were there—just a bit of the background that the article covers. At low tide you could see the piles throughout, but I didn’t spend any time there—just driven past many times so my only view of the traps was from the road and the bridge over the river.

When the tides not too low you can take canoes or kayaks up the estuary. We’d discussed it but got swept up in other things.

I can only imagine what a sight it must have been without the modern development and the wide harbour full of active fisheries. It must have been bustling at times.

Fish weirs! They found some over 100 years ago in Boston when they were building the subway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boylston_Street_Fishweir

Ancient native American stone eel traps still in place, the Susquehanna River near Danville, PA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcbbKJ17_No