There are calls for World Heritage listing for Australia's largest archaeological site — an ancient network of stone walls designed to trap fish at low tide.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains an image of people who may have died.

The elaborate series of stone walls stretches across tidal flats off the pristine beaches around the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Sitting just offshore the walls trapped fish as the tide receded.

For thousands of years this was an important source of food for Aboriginal people.

The late Kaiadilt elder Dugal Goongarra used the fish traps as a child.

In a 1982 recording he told the mythological Aboriginal story of how the stone walls were created by a crane and seagull siblings.

It was translated as: "He [the crane] built up the fish trap, carried stones … and found another [place for a] fish trap, [a place where] turtles get trapped, where trevally get trapped. Queenfish get trapped in that fish trap."

Bereline Loogatha's Kaiadilt family also used the fish traps.

"From 1946 to 1949 my family were removed, so they couldn't maintain their fish trap," she said.

They were moved 70 kilometres away to Mornington Island, where Ms Loogatha is among a group of local artists who have collaborated on a huge mural honouring the stone fish traps.

"The artwork is 20 metres by 2 metres, acrylic on canvas," Ms Loogatha said.

"In the middle you see a stone wall fish trap with turtles going inside and getting trapped within it. And enclosing the rock walls are blue water, very warm, comforting colours."

The mural is being exhibited at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane.

"It was important to do this to bring light to the vast numbers of fish traps that are in the Gulf of Carpentaria," Ms Loogatha said.

"We were more farmers of the sea, and we had to find a way of feeding our families."

'Staggering' feat

Professor Sean Ulm from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Histories said the oldest fish traps could be 10,000 years old.

"We think that the majority of traps date to the last 4,000 years and they're certainly the biggest structures built by Aboriginal and Torres Strait lander people," he said.

There are other Indigenous fish traps around Australia, but the Gulf structures extend over many kilometres, with one wall 900 metres long.

"The sheer volume of stone moved around is really staggering," Professor Ulm said.

"The traps have been mapped onto the topography of the intertidal zone and they are constructing these walls [at] different heights to take advantage of that topography and then building intersecting walls to go further out to sea.

Bereline Loogatha's community is calling for World Heritage listing to protect the stone walled fish traps.

"This is for the history of the Australian public, for Australian people," she said.

"So this is why we want this to be protected and the fact [that] with global warming, we could lose our fish traps.

"We're calling for World Heritage listing for our fish traps to protect them from vandalism, climate change, fisheries departments and tourism. 

"If my people do decide to do tourism in the area, [we ask] that it be done [in a balanced way], and so that others would come to see the works that these elders have done over the years."