Fishnet Float

Fishing in the Solomon Islands requires physical effort and, often, supernatural intervention to assure an abundant catch. Some Solomon Islanders use large communal fishnets, which require many individuals to operate. Communal net fishing is a male activity associated with rituals designed to ensure the good will and beneficence of spirits, who have the power to provide or withhold the fish. This work is a fishnet float, one of a group of floats threaded onto the top of the net, which bobbed on the surface to keep it open. Most fishnet floats were plain, but some portray birds, fish, or supernatural beings. Before setting out on a fishing expedition, participants visited the community fishing shrine, where they recited chants to the spirits who had the power to determine the success of the catch. Fishnet floats were rubbed in seaweed rinds whose magical properties helped to ensure that many fish would swim into the net.

The head of this float with its prognathic jaw, elongated head and stretched ear lobes to accommodate the wearing of decorative ear plugs, resembles that of the nguzunguzu or toto isu (canoe prow ornaments; 1976.351) that were also associated with the ancestral spirits that protect and provide good fortune to those at sea.