Sturgeon in Iberian Rivers

“We have some knowledge of the remote past situation in Portuguese rivers through the humanist André de Resende (1500-1573), whose posthumously published book De antiquitatibus Lusitaniae (1593) includes a chapter entirely devoted to the Portuguese rivers and the names of the sturgeon . . . Through Resende’s book (we know that the asturjão or soilho –the old Portuguese vernacular names of the sturgeon, which gave place, respectively, to the present ones esturjão and solho – was large and very good in the Minho, but small in the Lima. In the Douro it was less common than in the Minho, and it was very rare in the Tagus. Sturgeons of moderate size entered the Guadiana from March to the summer.”