Animals

Animals, birds and fish

Animals

Animals in the Danube Delta are mainly mammals, which live in the higher areas that cannot be reached by waters. Otters, minks, muskrats, foxes, wild bears, wolves, polecats, hares are to be found along with tortoises, adders and colonies of snakes, especially on the islands of Lake Razim. Hunting is not allowed in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve meant to protect wildlife.

The highly diverse ornithological fauna of the Delta Danube comprises over 250 species of birds, of which 70 are extra-European, 176 nestle in the Danube Delta and 178 are strictly protected by law. Birds fall into 5 categories, namely Mediterranean, i.e. herons, eastern flossy ibises, small cormorants, golden eagles, black-winged eagles, "Ciocintorses" avocets, shelldrakes, pelicans; European i.e. songsters - reed nightingales, buntings, "boicusi", sea swallows, seagulls, fishing eagles, and sea eagles; Siberian i.e. singing swans, plovers, polar grebes, half snipes, and cranes; Mongolian i.e. golden eagles and saker falcons; Chinese i.e. egrets, mute swans, large cormorants, Mandarin ducks.

Some species of birds have been acknowledged as "monuments of nature", and they fall into two groups "white monuments" - those having shining white feathers (the roseate pelican, the Dalmatian pelican, the spoonbill, the great white egret, the small egret, the mute swan), and "polychrome monuments" whose feathering combines

white and black with green, yellow, rust coloured, brown, blue (the black winged marshbird similar to a stork, the avocet, the shelldrake, the ruby shelldrake and the sea-eagle).

Over a surface of 20-25 sq. km, the Danube Delta is formed of hundreds of lakes, streams, channels sheltering some 110 species of fish, 36 of which belong to the delta proper. The delta accounts for 50 percent of the fresh-water fish production of Romania.

Some of the fish species are on the increase, like crucians, carps, breams, while others like pikes, tenches, sheat fish, pike perches are, unfortunately, on a constant decrease.

In the branches through which the Danube flows into the sea, where the flow is faster, there are usually sterlets, large beaks, great sturgeons, common sturgeons, sevrugas, mackerels, carps, sheat fish, perches, pikes, barbles, rapacious carps, and aspruses. In the still waters of the many lakes between the branches of the river are to be found crucians, perches, breams, pikes, and carps, while in the saltwater-fish environment of the Razim-Sinoe lagoonlike system one may find fish ranging from perches and pikes to grey mullets and flounders, their distribution depending on water salinity. The marine area in front of the delta shelters mostly sturgeons (to be found only in the Black and the Caspian Seas), common sturgeons and Danube mackerels.

Some of the above-mentioned species of fish can be found in other waters in Romania, but specific to the delta are sturgeons (the great sturgeon, the common sturgeon, the sevruga, and the red sterlet) which yield fine black roe (caviar); the great mullet, of which there are four species of the Mugil type; the Danube mackerel.

In the Danube Delta fishing is allowed all the year round except for a period of sixty days, starting from April 1, when fish spawn their roe