Many peoples living on the Northwest Coast, including the Tla’amin, built large structures out of wood or stone in the intertidal zone and at the mouths of rivers to catch fish. These structures are commonly known as fish traps, and their remains can be seen in many places throughout Tla’amin traditional territory.

Intertidal traps would have caught fish such as herring as they make their way near shore to spawn. They also would have caught many of the other species of fish that live in the near shore environment such as perch, sculpin, flatfish and others. Traps at rivers would have been placed to catch salmon returning to freshwater to spawn. Fish traps represent an intimate knowledge of local ecology, fish habits and habitats, and tide cycles.

Fish traps come in many shapes and sizes. Some traps are small, woven baskets that are placed at the ends of lead lines made of wood or stone that guide the fish into the trap. Once fish are caught, the trap is removed and emptied. Other traps are large and made of stone, wood or a combination of both. These large traps can be simple in shape, such as the semicircular stone fish traps seen on the Sliammon Reserve, or more complex, such as the stone enclosure from Desolation Sound.

Wooden Stake Fish Trap, Desolation Sound

Some fish traps incorporate natural features of the landscape, such as the pools in Desolation Sound, where simple stone walls enhance the existing pool to catch fish as the tide rushes out.

Other fish traps are made of a series of wooden stakes to which latticework panels would have been attached to catch fish, and would have stood as high as 3 or 4 metres. Today, all that remains of these wooden stake traps are the portion below the mean high tide level that have been preserved by water, such as the wooden stake fish traps located in Desolation Sound.