Fish
Marsili devoted his fourth volume to the fish of the Danube and, in all, examined 53 species, providing 33 striking engravings of fish and other aquatic inhabitants such as shellfish and turtles. Volume IV of Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus is important not only because it provides natural historians with the earliest fish data for the Danube but also because of Marsili’s decision to provide contemporary German, Magyar and Serbian names for the various fish of the Danube. In the main Marsili followed earlier authorities, such as the famous sixteenth-century ichthyologists Guillaume Rondelet (1507-66), and Conrad Gessner (1516-65), who, in turn, had influenced the research of later authorities whose works were particularly influential for Marsili: the renowned Italian natural historian Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), who, like Marsili, had been a noted benefactor of Bologna, and the English natural historians Francis Willughby (1635-72) and John Ray (1627-1705).[1]
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), iv, frontispiece.
The above frontispiece to the fourth volume of Marsili’s Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus depicts sturgeon fishing at the Iron Gates gorge, which divides the middle and lower Danube and forms the border between Serbia and Romania. As Bănăduc et al. note, at the gorge the Danube narrows to 150 metres and the river rushes between tall limestone cliffs before broadening again.[2] Along this narrow gorge sturgeon bones have been found in archaeological remains dating back to Palaeolithic times for it is through that gorge that sturgeon have, since time immemorial, striven to brave the steep gorge to reach to their breeding grounds.[3]
As a result, the exit of the gorge has provided an ideal spot for fishermen to catch sturgeon and Marsili’s frontispiece, which was engraved by the Dutch engraver Jacobus Houbraken (1698-1780), captures the process. In the front of the image are the Iron Gates themselves, while further down the river (the direction is helpfully indicated by an arrow), the process of sturgeon fishing is depicted. Sturgeon were large fish and, as we can see in this image, fishermen frequently used large traps and nets to capture them. Here, as the river broadens, we can see three ‘A’ shaped traps and the fishermen, with large nets and a harpoon, attempting to trap the fish. Further down the river, two fishermen struggle to lift a heavy sturgeon from their boat onto the river bank, before the large fish is cut up on a table. Marsili notes that at times firearms were used to hunt sturgeon![4]
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), iv, Plate 10. Beluga or great sturgeon (Huso huso).
The Danube River, Europe’s second biggest river, offers great diversity of habitats and, in 2014, at least 115 indigenous fish were identified.[5] As Deák notes, Marsili divided his fish species into four groups: ‘river-fish’; ‘marine fish living in rivers’; ‘swamp fish’ and ‘fish living among stones’.[6] Above is an image of Beluga or great sturgeon (Huso huso), which belonged to Marsili’s second grouping of ‘marine fish living in rivers’ so-called because they migrate up river to spawn. He seems to have been particularly fascinated by them. As a fish sturgeon was highly valued, being named the ‘Royal fish of the Danube’ and in 1518 the city of Komárom in northern Hungary gained the title of ‘Royal Sturgeon Fishing Grounds’, no doubt because it was well placed to capture sturgeon, given that it lay at the confluence of two branches of the Danube.[7] Sturgeon (Acipenseriformes), are the largest fish in the Danube and Beluga sturgeon, in particular, are certainly large: Bartosiewicz et al. state that their length can range between 80 and 600cm – and they are also long-lived (they can live up to 100 years).[8] Honţ et al. note that some of the largest populations of sturgeon may still be found in the Danube and that three of these are native diadromous species: Beluga (Huso huso), Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) and Stellate sturgeon (Aciepenser stellatus), with one native riverine potomadromus species, Sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus).[9]
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), vi, Plate IX. Dissection of a beluga or great sturgeon.
Marsili decided to include a whole section on the dissection of a Beluga sturgeon in Volume VI of the Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus.[10] In doing so he was following his heroes, Francis Willughby and John Ray (1627-1705), who had dissected many fish in the course of their studies. Indeed, as Didi van Trijp states, ‘Dissecting animals was in fact a key component of Willughby and Ray’s research’.[11] Dissection played a major part in the experiments of most early modern scientific academies and societies and Marsili would no doubt have attended (and participated in) a number of dissections in the course of his travels.
Marsili’s information about sturgeon and more generally the other fish species of the Danube is important not only because it was based on experiments such as this, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because since 1726 the aquatic habitats of the Danube have been radically impacted by human intervention, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[12] An engineering project, designed to make the Danube more navigable was completed in 1898, while the installation of two dams, the first in 1971 and the second in 1984, erected at the Iron Gates, have had a disastrous impact on the sturgeon population in particular.[13] Beluga sturgeon, which until the nineteenth century had migrated upstream as far as Germany, are now stopped at the Iron Gates by the installation of the two dams which has disrupted their spawning.[14] As the tracking study of Honţ et al. demonstrates, despite the fact that the first dam has been in place for over forty years, Beluga sturgeon and Stellate sturgeon still congregate at the Iron Gates Dam, following their long journey of over 800 kilometres up the Danube from the Black Sea.[15] Due to human intervention they can no longer follow their ancient migratory path and, as a result, stocks of sturgeon, relatively common in Marsili’s time, are in decline.[16]
TEXT: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library.
SOURCES
Bănăduc, Doru, et al., ‘’Portile de Fier / Iron Gates’ gorges area (Danube) fish fauna’, Transylvanian Review of Systematical and Ecological Research, 16 (2014), 171-196.
Bartosiewicz, László, Clive Bonsall & Vasile Șișu, ‘Sturgeon fishing in the Middle and Lower Danube region’, in Clive Bonsall, Vasile Boroneanț & Ivana Radovanović (eds), The Iron Gates in prehistory : new perspectives (Oxford, 2008), pp 39-54.
Cuvier, Georges, ‘Ray and Willughby and Their Immediate Successors’, in Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology / Tableau historique des progrès de l’ichtyologie: From Its Origins to Our Own Time / Depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours [online] (Paris, 2020).
Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004).
Honţ, Stefan, Marian Paraschiv, Marian Iani, Tihomir Stefanov, Mirjana Lenhardt, & Lucian Oprea, ‘Long Distance Migration of Beluga (Huso huso) and Stellate Sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus) in Lower Danube River in Relation with Iron Gate II Dam’, Bulletin of University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca. Animal Science and Biotechnologies, 75, no. 1 (2018), 28-39.
Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994).
Trijp, Didi van, ‘Fresh Fish: Observation up close in late seventeenth-century England’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 75 (2021), 311-332.
[1] Aldrovandi and Willughby were liberally cited throughout Marsili’s volumes on both fish and birds. Stoye suggests that Willughby and Ray’s De historia piscium libri quatuor, which had been published at Oxford in 1686, was a major influence on Marsili: Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994), p. 156.
[2] Bănăduc, Doru, et al., ‘’Portile de Fier / Iron Gates’ gorges area (Danube) fish fauna’, Transylvanian Review of Systematical and Ecological Research, 16 (2014), 172.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Bartosiewicz, László, Clive Bonsall & Vasile Șișu, ‘Sturgeon fishing in the Middle and Lower Danube region’, in Clive Bonsall, Vasile Boroneanț & Ivana Radovanović (eds), The Iron Gates in prehistory : new perspectives (Oxford, 2008), p. 51.
[5] Bănăduc et al., ‘’Portile de Fier / Iron Gates’ gorges area (Danube) fish fauna’, 172.
[6] Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004), pp 151-2.
[7] Bartosiewicz, László, Clive Bonsall & Vasile Șișu, ‘Sturgeon fishing in the Middle and Lower Danube region’, 51 & 47.
[8] Ibid., 41 & 47.
[9] Honţ, Stefan, Marian Paraschiv, Marian Iani, Tihomir Stefanov, Mirjana Lenhardt, & Lucian Oprea, ‘Long Distance Migration of Beluga (Huso huso) and Stellate Sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus) in Lower Danube River in Relation with Iron Gate II Dam’, Bulletin of University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca. Animal Science and Biotechnologies, 75, no. 1 (2018), 28.
[10] Marsili, Luigi Ferdinando, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), vi, pp. 15-17, pls 9-21.
[11] Trijp, Didi van, ‘Fresh Fish: Observation up close in late seventeenth-century England’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 75 (2021), 322.
[12] As Bănăduc et al., ‘’Portile de Fier / Iron Gates’ gorges area (Danube) fish fauna’, 174, notes, sturgeon had already been in decline from the seventeenth century due to overfishing.
[13] Ibid., 173-4.
[14] Honţ et al., ‘Long Distance Migration of Beluga (Huso huso) and Stellate Sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus) in Lower Danube River in Relation with Iron Gate II Dam’, 29.
[15] Ibid., 35.
[16] Bartosiewicz, ‘Sturgeon fishing in the Middle and Lower Danube region’, 39. See also Honţ et al., ‘Long Distance Migration of Beluga (Huso huso) and Stellate Sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus) in Lower Danube River in Relation with Iron Gate II Dam’, 28-39.