Salem, MA — As part of the Essex National Heritage Area’s annual Trails and Sails event series, students from Salem Public Schools, members of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, the City of Salem, and Salem Sound Coastwatch created an historically-accurate fishing weir at Cat Cove this past September.
During this multi-day cultural event, students used wooden stakes and bittersweet vines to construct the weir by weaving the vines in between the stakes so that fish may be caught in the weir during high tide. At the end of each day, volunteers from ENHC and SSCW took the weir apart so that more students could learn to build it the next day.
The purpose of this activity is to bring an important Indigenous Massachusett Tribe custom back to life in Salem. The indigenous peoples of Massachusetts knew how to interact with their environment in a sustainable manner. As our area faces continued threats to coastal resiliency and marine biodiversity, these students learned both an important history lesson and how to coexist with nature while minimizing harm to it. The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag has demonstrated fishing weir reconstructions in Boston Common in years’ past, but this is one of the first fishing weirs built out on the water in the Salem Sound in over 400 years!
