5 On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)
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Abstract
Most descriptions of marine life by naturalists of the sixteenth century concern the Mediterranean (Rondelet, Belon, Salviani), while evidence of fieldwork at sea or along the coasts is rare for the North Sea and North Atlantic. Here, the focus is on textual and visual evidence of both first-hand observations and “field work once removed” in manuscript sources of the second half of the sixteenth century: the richly illustrated albums of Adriaen Coenen (1514-1587), son of a Dutch fisherman and practical expert on marine life; and the letters (1597-1604) from Henrik Høyer in Norway to the naturalist Carolus Clusius. The focus is on their motivation; research methods; particular areas of interest; and the problems involved in the preservation of marine animals.