It will further recognize the contingent interaction, long before the modern age, between natural environmental variations and human-induced changes (resource exploitation to the point of overfishing, habitat alteration, eutrophication) with detectable ecological consequences. This will place estuarine and tidal ecosystems such as the Wadden Sea in a slow historic shift from human exploitation of local inland and inshore habitats to exploitation of frontier, commonly marine, increasingly pelagic resources. Humans have surely pursued, captured, and consumed aquatic organisms since at least the Palaeolithic, but the task of this report is to bring fisheries into the context of long-term changes in Latin Christian Europe between about 5 A.D., the period conventionally called the ‘Middle Ages’. In the case of herring ( Clupea harengus), Europe’s largest early commercial marine fishery, technological innovations which raised production and consumption played off against long-term consequences of intensely exploiting sensitive natural systems. Habitat preferences of catadromous eel ( Anguilla anguilla) and exotic carp ( Cyprinus carpio) let these species gain from medieval human activities. Anadromous salmon ( Salmo salar) and sturgeon ( Acipenser sturio) were negatively affected by overfishing and by unintentional human alteration of critical habitat. General processes are illustrated by case studies of selected indicator species from freshwater and marine habitats generally pertinent to the region surrounding the Wadden Sea. Some inland regions developed aquaculture to enhance local supplies of fresh fish. Exploitation slowly shifted from limited or deteriorating local inland and inshore fish populations to frontier, commonly marine, and increasingly pelagic resources. Many fisheries met the demand for food by economic reorientation from subsistence to artisanal and then even fully commercial purposes. ![]() Both nutritional and cultural needs shaped human consumption of aquatic organisms. Anthropogenic influences on fish populations and aquatic habitats interacted with natural environmental variations. To help understand the past and present of the Wadden Sea, this paper sets the main developments of medieval fisheries in the context of changing larger European social and aquatic environments ca. Humans have exploited European aquatic resources since at least the Palaeolithic, but during the Middle Ages rising human populations and demand initiated great changes in many fisheries.
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