Page 82 - Research & Innovation Report 2020

ENGINEERING, THE BUILT
ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

It would appear that the fish traps were also used as live ‘fridges’.
This same practice happened all along the Mediterranean where
the inhabitants built artificial pools near the sea and kept their
captured fish there.

Dr Minguzzi has studied ancient fish traps in Australia, England
and Japan and says that all over the world precolonial people used
fish traps in a very clever, sustainable way. “All the fish traps have
similar dimensions and positioning, clearly designed to take into
account the currents, tides and changing levels of water.”

The three researchers are co-authoring a paper on the subject,
which they aim to publish in 2022.

“In addition to the book, I was supposed to do a travelling
exhibition but the latter is impossible in these times and so in 2020
I started making a documentary instead, featuring all the chiefs
who have been co-researchers over the past five years. They talk
about heritage and heritage places that are particularly meaningful
to them; that are representative of their own place of belonging
but that was taken from them in the land occupation tyranny of
this country.”
Cover of the book "The Spirit of Water Practices of cultural
reappropriation. Indigenous heritage sites along the coast The 40-minute documentary was launched during Heritage Month
of the Eastern Cape-South Africa", submitted in 2020 and (September) this year at an open air function outside the Nelson
published in 2021 in co-authorship with the Khoisan chiefs of Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum. “We aim to show it around
Nelson Mandela Bay.
South Africa and internationally,” says Dr Minguzzi.

Dr Francesca Porri from the South African Institute for Aquatic Her multifaceted work addresses the power of indigenous
Biodiversity (SAIAB). lessons from the past – how human beings can enhance natural
biodiversity instead of destroying it. And at the same time, as
“We started investigating and sampling the early developmental SAIAB’s Dr Porri puts it: “Magda is courageously tackling the
stages of fish larvae living in the stone-walled fish traps at Cape much-needed – and delicate – question of the reappropriation
Recife,” she explains. “According to Dr Porri, some of the fish traps of their heritage values by Indigenous groups in South Africa;
appear to have been deliberately kept as fish nurseries where the values that were forgotten during the apartheid regime and
fish larvae could develop, indicating the sustainable practices of post-apartheid era. She is bringing back the voices of the
the community.” previously unheard.”

“ ... some of the fish traps appear to
have been deliberately kept as fish

nurseries where the fish larvae could

develop, indicating the sustainable

practices of the community.”

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