20 of December – Fish Day.

Fish Day was first established in Poland on December 20, 2003.

On the occasion of Fish Day, you can learn many interesting things about the water world and its inhabitants. Fish are one of the oldest groups of animals living on Earth. They existed long before the dinosaurs, namely about 500 million years ago. At the moment, more than 25,000 species are known. There are probably many more we haven’t discovered yet. Recent discoveries have shown that man was already catching them about 40,000 years ago.

Most often, the extremely colorful inhabitants of salty coral reefs or freshwater inhabitants of South American and African lakes are presented in the media.

Our domestic representatives of the ichthyofauna are less colorful, but very often they have a more interesting biology than saltwater ones.

In the Nida, the longest river in our voivodship, a total of 41 species of fish were found. The largest in our country, almost 3 m long, is the king of rivers, i.e. the European catfish. The smallest is the stickleback, about 8 cm long, which builds a nest for the young. One of the most beautiful of our native species is Amur bitterling. As the name suggests, the male takes on a pinkish reddish color during the mating season.

Many interesting facts about the representatives of the ichthyofauna of the Nida River can be learned during the tour of the Nidarium in the newly built Nature Education Center in Umianowice.