I'd photographed this weir a couple of times before that lovely, foggy morning. As I was photographing it this time, the owner of the property stepped out of his house to chat. A couple of days before I had knocked on his door to ask if I could photograph the weir from his front lawn and he had been fine with it. He didn’t own the weir that I was shooting but when I said how beautiful I thought they were, he said, “They’re quite the contraption, aren’t they?” Quite the beautiful contraption, indeed.
Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada.
In July I went to the Bay of Fundy to photograph fishing weirs.
Weir fishing is a very old method of fishing - the stakes of an ancient fishing weir have been found near to the Bay of Fundy, in Maine, dating back over 5,000 years - and it has been practiced around the world in almost all seaside and riverine cultures going back millennia. Despite challenges, weir fishing continues to be practiced around the largest Bay of Fundy Islands (Grand Manan, Campobello and Deer Island), defying predictions over 40 years ago that it was about to die out. The herring may not come in the same numbers as they used to, but older weirs continue to be maintained and a few new weirs are being built in the hopes of big herring catches. The herring weirs are made from 40-70 foot long stakes pounded into the ocean floor, top poles (thinner, lighter birch or aspen poles around 12- 18 feet tall) and are hung with twine nets. When herring come in to the coastal areas in their huge shoals they are directed, by a fence attached to the shore, into the heart-shaped weir where they are trapped. Although all weirs follow the same design principle, each is unique, its shape dictated by the currents and counter-currents, the type of sea bottom (sand or rock) and whether or not it has an additional pen for holding herring.
If you would like to read about my trip through the largest Bay of Fundy islands of Grand Manan, Deer Island and Compobello Island, take a look at
the blog post about my Bay of Fundy Islands trip. There is a
an album for the fishing weir series, but you can also look at image from my trips to the
Canadian Maritimes going back to 2014.
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