CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Fish Trap
vor 1900
About the object
A fish trap in the form of a long, tube-like basket made from the ribs of coconut palm leaves and tied up at the end. The basket is stabilised through eight double wooden hoops, through which the leaf veins are tied lengthways. In her notes about this artefact, Antonie Brandeis wrote that at certain times of the year, great shoals of “sardine-like fish” swarm into the lagoons of the Marshall atolls where they are then hunted by large predatory fish. The fishermen take advantage of the agitation of the swarming fish and use traps like this one to catch individual fish that stray into shallow waters.