Fish traps

Traps designed to catch fish or crustaceans in the shallower waters of the Madeiran sea.

The various forms in use at present can be reduced to four main types: the red mullet fish trap (covo), the moray trap, the shrimp trap and the mujona for fish and lobsters.

The first is made of giant reed (cana de roca) and is polyhedral in shape; it is customary to put fragments of white, shiny crockery inside it, which easily deceive and attract the red mullet. The second is cylindrical and built of wooden laths, with openings at both ends, and catches all four species of moray of the Madeiran coast without distinction.

The shrimp trap, which is set farther from the coast than any of the others, is made of rush and is roughly the shape of a truncated cone, with the opening for the crustaceans in its larger base. Finally there is the mujona, introduced to Porto Santo under that name by fishermen from the Algarve who came in 1910 to set up a tuna trap (armação, a fixed trap-net) on that island. It is used for inshore fish and lobsters, is made of iron rod or cane and has the shape of a half-spheroid.