Wait… What is this ? It’s a question that often comes to your mind when you spend a little time in a museum’s collections storage. You walk into the room looking for a beluga tooth, only to have your attention caught by an object you had never noticed before. Curiosity being what it is, it’s hard not to want to find out more. Luckily, one of the responsibilities of Exploramer’s museum team is to document the collections and gather as much information about them as possible.
This object is a small glass sphere, 27.5 cm in diameter, enclosed in a netting rope and it’s identified as a glass float. Further research reveals that objects like this were commonly used by fishers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to keep their nets afloat or mark the location of their traps. Because air is less dense than salt water, these glass spheres float naturally. The surrounding rope netting served two purposes: protecting the fragile glass from impacts and allowing the float to be securely attached to fishing gear.
Glass floats gradually fell out of use during the 1950s, as plastic alternatives became more widespread. Preserved today in Exploramer’s collections, this glass float bears witness to the tools, practices, and maritime heritage of generations of fishers in Gaspésie.
