Working with the K’ómoks Nation towards Q’waq’wala7owkw on their unceded territory.

Working with the K’ómoks Nation towards Q’waq’wala7owkw on their unceded territory.

The Comox Harbour

Fish Trap Complex

A large scale, technologically sophisticated intertidal fishery in Courtenay, British Columbia. The information on this page comes from Comox Valley Archaeologists Nancy Greene and David McGee. While it is not a Project Watershed project, we proudly support this body of work.

Results of highly detailed mapping and radiocarbon dating at a vast and largely unknown intertidal fish trap complex indicate a large-scale, technologically sophisticated Aboriginal trap fishery operated at Comox Harbour, Vancouver Island, British Columbia between about 1,300 and 100 years ago.

Ancient Fish Traps

View the full report

Highlights

Photo Gallery

Signs of Abundance Tour

K'ómoks First Nation Website

Highlights from the Ancient Fish Trap Study

Two temporally and morphologically distinct trap types were utilized, and the shift from the Winged Heart trap type to the Winged Chevron trap type about 700 years ago appears abrupt and closely coincident with Little Ice Age climatic conditions and increased importance of salmon at Aboriginal village sites on west coast Vancouver Island, at Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and south coast Alaska.

Stephen Hume: Archeology student publishes paper on ancient, industrial-scale First Nations fishery

England’s monarchs were sacrificing to Woden and persecuting Christian missionaries when First Nations managed a vast, highly-productive, industrial-scale fish harvesting complex in the estuary of the Courtenay River.
At first, the elaborate arrangement of 300 ingenious traps on the sandy flats of the river mouth harvested herring, which still mass to spawn off the east coast of Vancouver Island every March.
But 700 years ago, perhaps in response to climate change, the technology was altered to exploit pink, chum, coho, chinook and possibly sockeye salmon.