Danube Delta

General Information

The Delta Dunarii (Danube Delta) is Europe'w largest wetlands reserve, covering 2,681 square kilometers (1,676 square miles), with a sprawling, watery wilderness that stretches from the Ulkrainian border to a series of lakes north of the Black Sea resorts. It is Europe's youngest land-more than 43.7 square meters (47 square yards) are added each year by normal silting action. As it approaches its delta, the great Danube divides into three channels. The northernmost brach forms the border with Ukraine, the middle arm leads to the busy port of Sulina, and the southernmost arm meanders gently toward the little port of Sfantu Gheorghe. From these channels, countless canals widen into treefringed lakes, reed islands, and pools covered with water lilies; there are sand dunes and pockets of lush forest.

An exotic landscape with over 1,200 species of trees and plants, with the richest ornithological fauna on the continent (more than 300 species, among which unique colonies of pelicans) and ichthyological fauna (with around 100 species, from the Danube herrings to the sturgeons which produce the precious caviar).

More than 80% of the delta area is water. Over 300 bird species visit the area, 70 of them from as from as far away as China and India. The delta is a natural stopover for migratory birds, but the most characteristic bird is the common pelican, the featured star of this bird-watchers' paradise. Fishing provides most of the area's inhabitants, many of whom are of Ukrainian origin, with a livelihood. One of the most common sights is a long line of fishing boats strung together to be towed by motorboat to remote fishing grounds. Smaller communities, such as Independenta of the southern arm and Crisan on the middle arm, rent out the services of a fisherman and his boat to foreigners. The waters here are particularly rich in catfish, perch, carp, and daviar- bearing sturgeon.

History

"Among the rivers that have a fame and are navigable up from the sea there is also the Ister" - wrote Herodot of Halicarnas in Histories (484-425 BC), the earliest description of the Lower Danube lands; Publius Ovidius Naso (cca AD 10-15) noticed, he too, that "... the Danube is the biggest, / By no means does it want ti be lower than the Nile".

Europe's second largest river and the world's 26 th, with almost 2,900 km length, a basin of over 800,000 sq.km populated by some 80,000,000 inhabitants in eight countries - this is the business card of the generous waterway that has for millennia been the "thoroughfare" known, appreciated and travelled by the Phoenician long boats, Greek triremes, Roman galleys, Byzantine, genoese boats and caravels, Venetian galleons, Turkish bolozans, Cossask ships in the earlier days, tug boats, barges and motor boats nowdays. "Istros" in in the language of the Argonauts and in the mythology on the Nile banks, "Phisos" for the Phoenicians, "Danare" - "Donaris" for the Thraco-Getae, "Istrus" - "Histr" - "Danubius" for the Romans, known as "Rio Divino" at the court of Charles V and seen as "Le roi des fleuves de l'Europe" by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Danube traverses Romania's territory along its last 1,075 km, ending in a Delta - the most representative on the old continent and one of the most complex in the world.