At Home on the Waves by Tanya J. King Gary Robinson

Author:Tanya J. King, Gary Robinson [Tanya J. King, Gary Robinson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789201437
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Published: 2019-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

The moon holds a powerful sway over the movement of the tides and therefore over the behavior of fish. Yirrijta Yan-nhaŋu mythology holds the moon to be the embodiment of a masculine ancestral entity. His monthly resurrection is the outcome of a recurrent immolation, as he is repeatedly burnt to death in his unending punishment for drowning his two sons in a fish trap. Tidal intensity, low-low and high-high tides, are signified by the appearance of a full or new moon; traps are configured in graduated layers to take full advantage of these different tidal phases.14 For example, fish-trap deployment is influenced by the fact that one of the two daily low tides is lower than the other. For six months, from roughly dhuludur’ (October) through bärra’mirr (February), the lower of these two tides occurs at night. From roughly April to September, (Midawarr, dharratharramirr, and rarranhdharr), this low-low tide occurs during the day, at which time people forage on the märrandil (reef). The subsequent tidal return signals the ascendency of the domain of fish and the reef flats are submerged.

The return and departure of turtle, dugong, and fish species that inhabit the islands is a primary interest of local knowledge, and at the homelands, it is the topic of morning conversation. At certain times of the year on the island of Murruŋga, fish make up 70 percent of the daily protein intake for all the people on the islands (James 2009, 243). One way Yan-nhaŋu classify fish is by the ecological niche that they inhabit (table 8.3). Some fish move from the wiyaŋgul (deep water and outer rocks) up the reef slope and onto the reef flat to feed as the tide rises, while others come after the tide is full. Others, mainly bottom feeders, move from channels or depressions from the ŋarŋganabo (inside reef) onto the reef flat and reef pools on a rising tide.

As a consequence, inshore bottom feeders and some surface-feeding, schooling fish that feed on the low tide are typically caught in fish traps. Seasonal changes in tidal phenomena mean that for some of the six months of the year, the traps may be deployed most effectively at night and are dependent on the availability of particular species of fish.

Table 8.3. Fish types by habitat (adapted from Davis 1982).

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