Seychelles Fish Traps: Ingenious Designs Reflecting Ancient Survival Skills
“The bamboo fish traps, or Kazye Banbou Seselwa, have been part of the Seychellois fishermen’s psyche from the early days of settlement up until now.” On a reef flat at low tide in the Seychelles, a fisherman wades out to check a trap he set hours earlier. The trap is made not of metal wire or synthetic mesh, but of bamboo strips woven into a hexagonal pattern — a design that predates the arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean. The knowledge of when to harvest that bamboo, which species to use, and how to weave the trap so