Fishing the Harbour

English: , For at least 10,000 years the Saint John harbour and river estuary, with its rich range of maritime food resources, from shellfish to walrus, provided abundantly for the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and their ancestors. Often, the bones of the hunted themselves were skillfully worked into barbed harpoons, spears, knives and other tools necessary to carry on the hunting tradition. , In more recent times, as these photographs of nearby fishing establishments show, a commercial fishery once thrived right inside the harbour. Commercial salmon fishing, historically the most important fishery within the harbour, was closed in 1971. Fishing for wild Atlantic salmon, now an endangered species, is no longer permitted. Nevertheless, the St. John River and Saint John Harbour is one of the east coast's healthier waterways and a small shad, gaspereau, sturgeon and eel fishery continues, while salmon still return each year. , The commercial fishery was primarily a gill net fishery, where the fish swam into carefully designed nets so that their heads just went through the mesh of the net. Their bodies, being bigger than their heads, prevented them from moving forward and escaping the net, and they could not escape backwards, because their gills caught in the mesh, hence the name "gill net." Some gill nets were attached at one end to the shore and stretched part way across the river, while others were fastened to the stern of a boat that drifted up or down the river with the tide. There was also some weir fishing, where the fish swam into a trap, usually made of closely spaced vertical poles set into the river bottom. Once the fish entered the trap they continued to swim in circles until they were harvested by hand with dip nets., To learn more about this subject please visit the New Brunswick Museum. ,