Before Romania became an agricultural country, it was a fishing nation. This observation, published in 1937 in the magazine Realitatea Ilustrată, captures a reality that many forget today: for centuries, the Danube Delta was one of the most productive and important fishing areas in Europe.
A recent study by Ștefan Constantinescu, Natasa Vaidianu, Petruța Teampău, Aurelian Giugăl, and Priscila Lopes, published in Discover Sustainability (2026), reconstructs this long and complex history for the first time – from the Ottoman period to the present.
The study combines georeferenced historical maps, archive documents, press articles, and 18 interviews with local fishermen and administrators. The researchers spent a total of 601 days in the field between 2020 and 2025, in the settlements of Sfântu Gheorghe, Sulina, Chilia, and Mila 23.
From the Ottomans to interwar cooperatives
The first documented evidence of organized fishing in the Danube Delta dates back to the 15th Century. In 1491, Sultan Bayezid II relocated people from Silistra to Chilia-Veche to exploit the delta’s aquatic wealth.
Fishing was so profitable that it contributed significantly to the tribute the Danubian Principalities paid to the Ottoman Empire. 17th Century travellers – Paul of Aleppo and Evliya Çelebi – described with amazement impressive catches of beluga sturgeon (Huso huso) and Danube sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii).
These operations involved thousands of people, and the salted and smoked fish reached the markets of Constantinople, Varna, and even the Italian ports of Ragusa and Ancona.
After 1878, when Dobrogea was reintegrated into Romania, fishing gradually came under state control. The essential reform came with naturalist Grigore Antipa, who laid the foundations of a modern water resource management system.
The Law of 1896 created the Fisheries Service, and later institutions such as the General Directorate of State Fisheries and PARID (The General Administration of Fisheries and Improvement of the Danube Floodplain) promoted scientific methods and organised the first fishermen’s cooperatives. The number of fishermen in the delta grew spectacularly, from 1,118 in 1895 to over 5,000 within a decade and a half.
Communist industrialisation and its price
The communist period brought about an unprecedented scale of industrial exploitation. Up to 75% of national fish catches originated from the Danube Delta and the Danube floodplains. The state drained immense areas – in the Brăila Wetland (Balta Brăilei), for instance, lakes were reduced by 85% between 1880 and 2005 – and transformed part of the delta into agricultural land.
Fish processing facilities (cherhanale) and canneries turned entire towns, such as Sulina, into industrial hubs. Annual fish production reached 10,000-20,000 tonnes in the 1960s and 1970s, only to drop sharply to around 3,000 tonnes per year after 1984, signalling that resources had been depleted.
The reservation and present-day conflicts
After 1989, the delta entered a new phase – in 1991 it was declared a UNESCO site, and in 1993 the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve (DDBR) was established. The intention was to protect a unique ecosystem, but the abrupt transition left fishing communities without compensation or alternatives.
Catches fell by 83% compared to levels at the beginning of the 20th century. The 2006 ban on sturgeon fishing, implemented after reported catches had dropped by 88%, hit Sfântu Gheorghe the hardest. It was the only community that still used traditional sturgeon traps, a practice halted overnight, with no compensation for lost equipment or missed income.
Today, more than half of current catches are unreported, ending up on the black market or lost to poaching, according to researchers from the Institute of Aquatic Ecology and Aquaculture in Galați.
Locals view environmental enforcement agents as tools of a state perceived as distant and authoritarian, imposing top-down rules without consulting the communities.
Why history matters
The study shows that the current problems in the delta are not recent accidents, but the result of accumulated decisions over hundreds of years: decisions regarding infrastructure, property rights, labour regimes, and territorial control.
The fishery facility (cherhana) in Sfântu Gheorghe, once the largest in the country, has been closed since 1997. The old processing centres at Perișor and Ciotic are now in ruins. Their disappearance represents not only an economic decline but also the loss of a cultural heritage.
The authors conclude that the Danube Delta cannot be managed effectively through environmental policies that ignore this history. Any conservation or sustainable management strategy must stem from a deep understanding of local communities, their collective memory, and the institutional legacy they carry with them, otherwise, it will reproduce the same cycle of exclusion and conflict that this study so well documents.
Article based on: Constantinescu et al., The human and historical tapestry of fisheries in the Danube delta, Discover Sustainability, 2026.
