Australian Fish Traps

Keen to uncover how 6,600-year-old Indigenous Australian fish traps reveal sophisticated ancient aquaculture techniques and their relevance today? Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps are heritage-listed Australian Aboriginal fish traps on the Barwon River at Brewarrina, in the Orana region of, New South Wales, Australia. They are also known as Baiame's Ngunnhu, Nonah, or Nyemba Fish Traps.

The Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum, opened in 1988, adjoins the site. The weight of these traps ensures that they fish on the seabed. Fish traps in Western Australia are used to target tropical demersal reef fish such as snappers, emperors and groupers.

They are either square or rectangular, with one side of the trap leading into a funnel-shaped, tapered, vertical slit entrance. The creation of the fish traps, and the Aboriginal Lore governing their use, helped shape the spiritual, political, social, ceremonial, and trade relationships between Aboriginal groups from across the greater landscape. The fish traps were an important site of food production, work, trade and consumption.

Matt Poll from the Australian National Maritime Museum shows how ancient Aboriginal fishing and harvesting practices mimicked and took advantage of environmental features. The traps were one of the great inter-tribal meeting places in Eastern Australia for many nations of Aboriginal peoples, including the Morawari, Barkinji, Weilwan, Kamilaroi, Koamu, Valarai, Baranbinja, Wiradjuri, Ngemba, and Yualwarri peoples. The Brewarrina Fish Traps consist of a complex arrangement of dry.

The fish traps at Brewarrina, Australia, are extraordinary and ancient structures. Why aren't they better protected? The Ngunnhu traps on the Barwon river were once a great gathering site for Indigenous people, but their present custodians say damage and neglect since white settlement is a shameful blot on Australia's heritage record. Fish traps are used to catch finfish species that live on or near the sea floor, normally on seamount and continental slope waters of between 300 and 700m deep.

Species targeted In the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery fish traps have mainly been used to target pink ling. A biography of the Australian continent Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps (Baiame's Nguunhu) The Aboriginal fish traps at Brewarrina are regarded by the Ngemba custodians as highly significant. The site is also shared with the neighbouring groups: Morowori, Baranbinja, Ualaria, Weilwan, Kamilaroi, Kula and Naualko (Rando, 2007).

Aboriginal fish traps are made with rocks or small boulders that have been placed strategically in a flowing waterway that forms a trap. The arrangement allows the flow of water to pass through, with an opening large enough for a fish or other aquatic life to be caught inside but not escape.