|
Catching a sturgeon could once have changed a Danube fisherman's life but modern dams and over-fishing mean they are rapidly dying out.
"The beauty of the sturgeon," explains Radu Suciu, "is that this is an armoured fish."
And he takes down from his shelf his visitor's box, which rattles.
Inside is a mixture not of fish bones - the thin things which get stuck in your throat and you have to eat bread to dislodge - but chunks of sturgeon skeletons.
The complete one looks like a fossil, with its distinctive, long, sharp nose.
The sturgeon has been around for a lot longer than humans - at least 200 million years. It is such a perfect design that it has hardly changed. |
|
|
Multiple threats
"The sturgeon is not a good swimmer," continues Radu, "but it is a good climber."
He fishes out two long, yellow pectoral bones that the fish uses to anchor itself on the bed of fast-flowing rivers like the Danube, which it goes up every few years to spawn.
At the famous underwater cataracts at the Iron Gates, between Romania and Serbia, the river climbs steeply. |
|