This past summer I was walking down the beach at the end of the day and I saw these sticks poking up from out of the water. They were fairly far offshore and I had no idea what they could be for. I took a picture or two and then continued on my way. After awhile I turned back and as I was walking back to my car a fisherman stopped me and asked if I got any good pictures. We spoke for just a moment or two but I did ask him if he knew what the sticks were. He told me they were a “fishing weir” but didn’t say much more and I went on my way. Now, thanks to Google, I know that these weirs are an old way of fishing in shallow nearshore areas. The weirs are normally up for only a few weeks, typically in spring to early summer. In the old days (a hundred years or more ago) these were very temporary structures, lasting for only a day or two and easily destroyed by the tides and wind. Now days, they are pounded into the sand so they last for a few weeks at a time and they catch mostly squid, scup, and sea bass. The fish they catch are supposed to be very high quality but getting scarcer and scarcer so this way of fishing may disappear in the future.
This photo was taken at sunset but the combination of sky color and water color made it difficult to see the weir. I decided to convert the photo to black and white using Lightroom with the SiverEfex Pro 2 plugin to lighten the sky and clouds/haze and emphasize the weir itself.
Photo information: taken with a Canon 5D Mark III, 25 – 105mm lens (@105mm), using manual mode at 1/30 sec at f/13.
