Danube Delta per kilogram, Give time, Give biodiversity by Mălin Mușatescu

When I meet a local fisherman, I can't help but ask him how the fishing is going. It is more of a rhetorical question, we all know that the fish reached the Danube Delta less often than the pterodactyl.

• Stupid, how to go? I am happy when a few kilos of crucian carp enter my net, and that one as small as a palm. "Currency" I haven't seen for a long time...
• Currency?, I ask with the sincerity of the townsman who thought he knew everything in the Delta.
• "Currency", i.e. pike, catfish, carp, shad... Merchandise that should go directly to guesthouses, because it is in high demand

illustration by Anca Galiceanu

Delta Ddisadvantaged area units, tourism, reeds, meat and roe

Tourism in the Danube Delta is declaratively based on borsch and plachia from fresh fish and other traditional fish dishes. In reality the fish – preferably the carp – are caught in the prohibition, when they enter the flood zones, to reproduce. Thus, the Delta man shoots two birds with one stone - meat and roe. All of them - per kilogram - bring him a nice profit when fishing is prohibited and the guesthouses stock up on fish for the coming tourist season. In August, the bunch of tourists for whom the Danube Delta means "borscht" and "pelican run by boat" eat the plate of fresh carp, with carp that slept its eternal sleep for 3-4 months in the freezer of the delta entrepreneur.

• How much is the crucian carp left?, I remove Vanea, a young fisherman, who only knows the still unspoiled Danube Delta from pictures and from his father's stories
• 8 lei at the cherhana and 9 at the guesthouse. But on this dust I prefer to give everything to the guesthouse.

We are in Mila 23, the heart of the Delta, where the fishing boats have started to close, at least during the tourist season, when the valuable fish - as long as there is any - go to the guesthouses. All in black.

• Well, it's good, because gasoline costs about the same. You took out 20 kilos of crucian carp, your boat engine runs all day..., I tell him.
• Remember that our gas is subsidized... we buy it for 5 lei, he answers me smiling.

The Danube Delta is a declared underprivileged area, where the hard life is sweetened by all kinds of subsidies for transport, electricity. The reed is free, the fish free, obviously respecting some amounts set by the legislator. Which is not really respected. As fishing, as a traditional-central activity in the lake, is in massive decline, commercial fishermen become boatmen on the "corsair" flotillas purchased with European money in projects aiming at the sustainable development of local communities. Powerful, fast boats enter the Delta everywhere with tourists, sustainably destroying the fragile aquatic habitats in shallow gulches and back channels. The rush at over 60km/h is the delight of day-trippers, who pay a boatman to enter bird areas and chase them down to take phone pictures of the pelican taking its heavy flight from the water, guiltily vomiting a squirm Collateral victims are the pond hens and coots, over which the boat speeds up and absorbs them into the propeller. And not only birds enter this tourist mixer, but also fish, snails, frogs and everything that means aquatic species in the Danube Delta. The proof is the seagulls that fly over the bow of the boat, picking up the pieces of meat chopped by the propellers, in which the last bit of life is just dying out. In the wake of each such boat that runs madly through the Delta, a good part of the Delta's biodiversity dies every day of the tourist season. And because biodiversity has come up, I return to the bar in Mila 23.

• Well, without fish what do you do? Because I see that even the tourists haven't stormed this year...
• We can handle it Now you don't strike with the fish anymore, but with crayfish. It's 75 lei for a crayfish trap... look, I don't think there is a household in the village that doesn't have a few dozen crayfish traps. There are many who have hundreds... It's 12 lei per kilogram of crayfish, but I realize that we've taken them out of the area... It's getting harder and harder to find them, instead the neighbor started catching crayfish like no one has seen before so far here. They throw them away, no one wants them, Vanea continues, ordering another beer.

photo Dragos Olaru

Danube Deltacrabs, shrimps and leeches

In Lake Fortuna, not far from Mile 23, large freshwater crabs and shrimps, Asian species, have started to appear, probably arrived in the Delta by Ukrainian ships unloading water used as ballast and taken from Asian ports, in order to be able to load the goods from the Danube ports. The native crayfish is a territorial and aggressive species, the Danube Delta has probably seen such invaders before, but the waters were "guarded" by our crayfish. Now they too have thinned out, and the "aliens" have already made their way into ecosystems devastated by fishing, boat traffic, disastrous waste water management, nitrates, insecticides, fungicides and pesticides from local "organic" agriculture.

• ... But if you want to know - says Vanea, wiping the foam of fresh beer from his blond mustache with the palm of his hand - it's not cancer that's a trick now... Leeches, brother! But not just any, the olive ones... you know... the "medicinal" ones. It's 300 lei per kilogram of leeches... I take them for the anticoagulant substance.

The pharmaceutical industry uses the anticoagulant substance that leeches inoculate when they attach to the host to suck its blood. As the Covid pandemic has generated a massive consumption of anticoagulant drugs, mandatory in medium and serious cases, the demand is high. An acquaintance told me that in Constanța a kilogram of leeches is sold for 700 lei, but this is unconfirmed information. However, the demand is high and that makes harvesting a kilogram of leeches more profitable than harvesting a kilogram of "currency", which is sold on the quasi-present black market in the Delta, for 25-30 lei.

• So, it's still a mess, so to speak...
• You can! The leeches are over too.

photo by Vlad Rădulescu

Danube Deltalands, agriculture, cows, frogs and subsidies

Biodiversity has a bulk price, per kilogram among the inhabitants of the Delta. From 8 lei for a crucian carp, to 300 lei for leeches, each element of biodiversity produces added value, because it has no way of producing taxes to the Romanian state, as long as neither crayfish nor leeches are part of the species that must be declared at cherhana. Otherwise, what is poached, is not put. But I don't want to go too deep into technical details, because I have to solve a question that has been bothering me for about two years. What is happening to the frogs in the Delta? They were everywhere, filling the banks of the Danube, the ditches between the canals, the ditches. Billions of frogs.

• Vanea, maybe it seems to me, but it seems that even frogs are not what they used to be...
• You don't think so. They still sell like crayfish, about 12 lei, it depends on how you haggle... In the spring, the whole village goes out for frogs, but not all the time, but when the Italians come to buy them. Tons. They thinned out, but not because of the Italians. I'll tell you how things are...

Here Vanea lights a cigarette, draws the smoke deep into her chest, nods to a neighbor who has just gone ashore with some tourists brought by the "corsair", and begins with a rare and subdued speech.

• Look, I don't have cows, but there are enough in the village who have 100-200. All with crotal, that they are taken in scripts from APIA. I receive a subsidy. You know how it is with our puddle cow... It sits in the gravel, in the puddle, you don't see it all year, only when the lady from Agriculture comes to count them, so she can calculate what she gives you subsidies for...
• I stay in the pool in the winter, I understand that it's mortality, I say.
• Boss, do you have any idea how many calves appear in the spring in the grind? It's serious business catching rattles in the vine's ears But what you lose in winter, you gain in spring.

For the cattle owner, who cannot be called a breeder, the business is as profitable as possible. No feed, no cowherd, no stable and vet, the costs are limited to the gasoline burned in the boat engine with the man from APIA to count the cows with the rattle. With zero reported milk and cheese, with the impossibility of legally slaughtering cows for meat - because there is no authorized slaughterhouse in Tulcea - and with the impossibility of taking live cows out of the Delta due to an infectious epidemic, this kind of animal husbandry seems more like a gross prank. The fires of tens of thousands of hectares of reeds, as well as the destruction of fauna and flora from the sedges and sedges that escape the fire, but are trampled by hooves during grazing, are a direct threat to the survival of biodiversity at the mouths of the Danube.

• Well, and what's the matter with the frogs?, I interrupted him, looking at him circumspectly, even though he hadn't managed to finish the second pint of beer.
• Well, it is! That the cattle graze on beams, plaurs and japs. It's about the only cow that grazes reeds, thistles and marsh grass, because it's not muddy for nothing... But to make room for grazing in the marsh, you have to set fire to the dry reeds in the winter, so that the cows can come in and eat in the spring the tender spears of reeds, barely budged Year after year they set fire, burning thousands of hectares of plaurs, banks, reeds, willows. Understand? Tons of frogs were roasted and what's left in that dry reed, he tells me, raising his eyebrow...

Thousands of hectares burn every winter and blacken vast stretches of the Delta. Not only the hibernating fauna – snakes, lizards, frogs, insects, otters, foxes, raccoon dogs, turtles, badgers, minks – but also the flora perish in the flames. Apparently it is a traditional gesture, to set fire to the old reeds so that the new reeds grow vigorously. But this happens in reed harvesting areas, not everywhere. The fact is that there are over 25,000 cows in the Delta, all subsidized with European money. The carrying capacity for grazing is far exceeded, so the locals with tens and hundreds of cows become a kind of pioneers of the Wild West and scorch the swamp to make room for the cattle. What is harder to understand is how Europeans pay tens of millions of euros for animal husbandry and agriculture in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, while they pay tens of millions more for biodiversity protection projects.

photo Gyuri Ilinca

Danube Deltacountries, swimming pools, karaoke, double glazing

I look at Vanea and understand that in Brussels biodiversity is much more expensive than in Mile 23. A project to save the European mink in the Delta means tens of thousands of euros, while all the mink furs that end up on the obscure local poaching market are worth nothing more than 1% of this value. I'm in the Delta and I miss the old Lipovans, the ones with beards, with love for the lake, with faith in God. And I still miss their old houses with thatched roofs, white walls and blue woodwork, with cradles and icons. I miss the clear waters full of birds, water lilies and fish. I'm in the Delta, but all that is far away. A walk through the village will reveal swimming pools, karaoke, thermal insulation, tin roofs guaranteed for 25 years. The Lejanca is replaced by a power plant, and the Lipovians with beards have disappeared like the lynxes, caracudas, widows and sables. The waters are murky, bubbling with boat traffic that turns the Old Danube into Magheru Boulevard in the summer. The water smells like sewage, and the air has a heavy whiff of exhaust fumes.

We are at the end of the tourist season. Imperceptibly the short autumn will turn into an atypical winter, most likely without ice and without snow. Ideal conditions for pike poaching, because pike roe has become a strong currency - 400 lei per kilogram. Don't think it strange that the Danube Delta is a Biosphere Reserve, included in UNESCO's universal heritage, through the Man and Biosphere program. With man and the biosphere in the same bucket, the Delta is like a market where man is the trader and the commodity is the Biosphere. In every corner of the pond the reeds, the sedges and every palm of the sedge already have a price on them, put out on the stall, as do the potatoes, radishes, celery and parsley. Even goose, duck, and swan eggs are a delicacy, if you know when to get them from under the bird's cloaca.

photo Gyuri Ilinca

Danube Deltahey, everything has an end

More than 40 years ago, on the Olguța canal, I met a kid from Mila 23 who was hunting for some big carp hidden in a hole with his gun. Prostovol was a prohibited net even in communist times, so I asked him jokingly - I say jokingly because then the Danube Delta was still a Paradise - what he will do when he grows up and there will be no more carp and catfish to take him with a jacket to the prostovol. He slammed the pistol into the wooden box and thought for a few seconds, scratching the top of his head.

• I'm going to catch bream and bream!, he answered me with the satisfaction of a student solving a difficult algebra problem on the blackboard.
• And when will those go too?
• Frogs!, he told me laughing.

We all laughed and looked at our fish, because we were young and did not believe then that everything has an end, including Paradise.

In the 1980s, when Ceaușescu planned to transform more than half of the Delta into agricultural fields, a glance at the clear waters was equivalent to reading an entire treatise on ichthyology. Biodiversity, as yet unnamed, was there, in front of one who humbly entered the Delta, as in a temple of water lilies. After 40 years, the Danube Delta is a Reserve, and the results of the studies currently underway to monitor the state of biodiversity are downright embarrassing. Beyond keywords like biodiversity, protection and sustainable activities, the indecent reality looms: not even half of the habitats mapped in the 1990s exist anymore. More than 60% of fish species are threatened or actually extinct. When fish and frogs disappear, snakes and birds disappear. The pelican colonies, the largest in Europe, will collapse. The Danube Delta will be ugly, desolate, with murky waters and fish borscht in which African catfish and Norwegian mackerel are boiling. Maybe this way we won't even notice that the last traditional Lipovanian house was demolished to make way for a one-story guesthouse with a swimming pool. It will be the transition from a disadvantaged area to a disaster area.

Vanea is already looking at the phone for several minutes. Vanea doesn't have a beard, but she has Facebook and WhatsApp. Then suddenly, he remembered me. He tells me, getting up from the table, that he has to leave to shake off some big Danube winds. Special, deep winds, set with GPS. Vanea is a modern fisherman, equipped with the latest technology, 5G on the phone, active in dedicated social networks, where the occurrences of controls in the pond are reported, with GPS and engine with on-board computer. Vanea drives his boat at over 70 Km/h, has a motorcycle helmet and, once on the boat, looks like a cosmonaut who stepped on the threshold of a church. Because the Danube Delta, for its part, looks like a church with icons sold and abandoned by the faithful.

Vanea, the fisherman, takes off in a trumpet waving me goodbye and disappears along the Old Danube. The sun sinks reddish beyond the horizon. A muffled, distant rumble is heard from the sea, reminding me that beyond the Danube there is war. A Russian cruise missile hit Snake Island. The 21st century will be with fresh fish borscht, or it won't be.

Malin Musatescu

Article published in Architecture magazine, Danube Delta, no. 3 – 4, 2022

Architecture magazine no. 3-4, Δ Dunării, can be bought from Cărtureşti, Patrimonescu, Mihai Eminescu bookstore, Union of Architects from Romania

Want more about Delta? Don't miss the video from the debate "The Danube Delta, an anthropologist, an architect, a journalist and a doctor meet in Suțu Palace"!

We invite you to board a boat whose rowers will tell you their story about the Danube Delta. There are people who, once upon a time, long ago or perhaps recently, came to discover, know, love and fear for the Delta.

For Malin Musatescu, Today's Danube Delta is a permanent disappointment, a beloved place, once full of all miracles, today sold by the kilo piece by piece. For a filmmaker, journalist in this world of fishing for more than 20 years and former Governor of the Delta, it seems that there is no more hope.

Teodor Buliga he recounts thousands of years of history and geological eras as events seen and experienced by himself. He spent his holidays in the Danube Delta, taken by his parents at that age of trust in the world around him. Like a Woodstock of willows and reeds, they lived that carefree youth where nature, life, however wide it was, was all theirs.

Catalin D. Constantin enjoys the more or less discreet charm of the abandoned villages in the Delta. With the eyes of an anthropologist and the heart of a poet, he is already at home in Sfântu Gheorghe. In his images you can see a world full of life and colors. Seen from above or from the level of the reeds, his Delta is beautiful and serene.

Ioana Alexe is an architect and editor-in-chief of "Architecture" magazine. In the fall of last year, he coordinated an issue of the magazine with the theme of the Danube Delta.