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International Journal of Marine Science 2013, Vol.3, No.28, 219-224
http://ijms.sophiapublisher.com
220
The so-called Parish Descriptions emerged as a result
of the Enlightenment tradition of drawing up
descriptions of the territory and, in the Portuguese
case, succeeds the investigation called Marquis
Inquiry (Marquis of Pombal, Minister of Portuguese
King Joseph I), dated of 1656. Marquis Inquiry
resulted from the desire to know the effects that the
so-called Lisbon Earthquake (November 1, 1775), a
natural catastrophe, about 9 magnitude on the Richter
scale, that had an enormous impact reported in the
whole of Europe of the 18
th
century. Parish
Descriptions arise from a series of attempts to gather
information about the country, through a questionnaire,
beginning early in the 18th century. They continue the
work of Fr. Luis Cardoso, who, between 1747 and
1751, published two volumes of his Geographical
Dictionary, which remained incomplete
because the
collected information was lost during the
earthquake
. The project was once more taken up in
1758, with government support, when the original
questionnaire was enlarged and divided into three
parts, containing questions on the parish, the
mountains and the rivers. The inquiry was directed to
all the bishops that, in turn, have made reaching out to
at parish priests. The document and the quality of the
responses are extremely varied, depending on the
effort and capacity of each cleric (Atlas. Cartografia
Histórica, s.d.).
More or less detailed responses, with greater or lesser
accuracy that resulted from these investigations, the
Parish Description of 1758 are a precious source for
the knowledge of Local History and of the Portuguese
territory
in mid-eighteenth century (Figure 2)
. Being
of national scope, allows us to (also) an approach to
the knowledge of the coast in its various aspects and
in a synchronous approach.
In this case we will highlight the answers to the
questions that allude to the fish fauna.
Another important aspect is the season when the
historical information was written (
e.g
. the provided
information in the historical records is different
according to the season in which it was written) and in
this particular situation was written in the winter
(Osswald, 2002).
This last assertion only serves to reiterate one of the
aspects that enhance and enrich the information
contained in this historical source. Of course, the case
of Aveiro’s Lagoon (located in the north of
Portugal)
Figure 2 Excerpt of the Parish Description of Aveiro
was no exception (Sarmento and Cardoso, 2006).
There are many elements included in the responses of
the pastors: economic, social, geographical and fauna
references.
1 Background
In 1904, Adolfo Loureiro made a description of the
port of Aveiro, in which he described an historical
overview of Aveiro from Roman times until the late
19th century (Loureiro, 1904). Despite the relevance
of his study the first work to draw attention, in a
consistent perspective, for the major changes observed
in the coastal zone occupied by the lagoon of Aveiro
was the one from Schwalbach
Lucci (1918). On the
basis of a careful geological and geomorphological
analysis, the author concluded, notably the coastal
developments in the region: a large bay widely exposed
to oceanic waves was gradually being confined by the
growth of a sandy spit which set the lagoon body.
The doctoral thesis of Amorim Girão (1922), building
on the work and ideas of Lucci (1918), complemented
them significantly and gave them more coherence and
substance, both the geological and geomorphological
analysis, with archaeological data, historical