Researchers looking for underwater fishing wall built by Haida in the last ice age

A stone wall buried underwater could open the doors to the history of Haida culture. Researchers are looking for a fishing weir- a stone wall used to help capture fish- that they believe was built in the last ice age, around fourteen thousand years ago.

If the weir is found, it would be the oldest known in the world, and shed new understanding on Haida culture.

Quentin Mackie is a professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria. He's leading a team to Gwaii Haanas National Park to search out the weir.

"We have very high resolution of the sea floor," Mackie says. "We know that people were there as long as twelve-and-half thousand [years ago]... so it's not a huge stretch to think that people may have been using those streams."

"It just captures the imagination to think there may be this lost world down there."

(photo: A wood fishing weir built in 2013 to help catch fish on the Koeye River near Bella Coola. Photo credit Grant Callegari and the Hakai Beach Institute.)