The Genius of Fishing with Tidal Weirs
Seen from the air, the Micronesian state of Yap is a jewel-green archipelago of dense forests patched with taro fields, fringed by mazes of mangroves, and trimmed by coral reefs. And, fanning out from the wrack lines into the turquoise shallows like a frill of beaded tassels is a geometric design of rock structures that are shaped like arrows, beech mushrooms, or penises. The Yapese call these structures aech, and they are tidal fish weirs, one of the world’s most common Indigenous mariculture tools.
“Our aech is called Aechwol because of its luck,” says Thomas Ganang, whose family has owned for generations an aech near the village of Gachpar, off the eastern shore of Gagil-Tamil Island; in Yapese, “wol” means “luck.” “Whatever fish I catch inside the aech is a sign of luck. So it’s an ‘aech with good luck.’” Ganang, who is 66, fondly recalls how, when he was still a boy, his father, Laman, took him to the faluw—a traditional men’s house in Yap—to teach him everything about fishing, including how to use aech.
The mechanics of tidal weirs are simple: They are made of walls, varying in shape and size. (In Yap, weir walls are built of stone, but in other regions of the world a traditional weir can have a stone base with temporary wooden structures built on the top, or it can be made entirely out of wood.) High tide submerges these walls, letting fish swim within them freely, but as the tide ebbs, the fish gets trapped in the chambers. Then, fishermen—in Yap, traditionally, fishing is a to catch fish, or herd it toward weir baskets woven of split green bamboo stalks laced with coconut cord, which are submerged and attached to the end points—the arrowhead’s barbs—of the . If fishermen are looking for a bigger catch for a community event, they use leaf brooms made of coconut fronds twisted about a long rope to herd the fish into weir baskets or nets.
