Maritime Museum "Caravel"

A rare and exclusive collection of artifacts that tell about the living world diverse oceans and seas, full of secrets and mysteries represented for visitors of the Maritime Museum "Caravel". The owner of this unique collection Raul Kimovich Samatov. He brought his first exhibits in memory of military service on the island of Cuba. From this moment begins his passion for the sea world . Now his collection consist of stuffed sea turtles, crocodiles, marine and freshwater fish , oceanic sharks , delicious scallops clams and sea snails, corals, starfish, sea urchins, crabs and more.

The pride of the collection is a six-meter nose sawfish (length - 1.5 m ), which was caught in the Atlantic Ocean and weighed 1,200 kg, whalebone, 210 cm long, which is the copyright of a large whale of Greenland, two sash giant clams each one15 pounds ( !) , stuffed green sea turtle (length - 1 m ), which was caught near the island of Borneo in the Indian Ocean and weighed 54 kg , the collection of marine stingrays (6 pieces) , walrus tusk weigh (2 kg, length 61 cm) , nose of swordfish, jaw of two-meter tiger shark . Among freshwater representatives immediately striking head of catfish (weigh35) caught in the river Ai , head of pike (weigh15) caught in the lake Asylykul district Davlekanovskiy RB, and two magnificent piranha from Venezuela.

Among the shells stand nautiluses squad of cephalopod marine snails from the south- western Pacific Ocean, giant conch or royal sea snails from Cuba, large predatory sea snails or imperial helmet, huge Charon or triton horn , before whom the inhabitants of the Indo- island states Pacific region was used as a signal horn. Here you can see the sea shell of biggest snail syringes, or north- Australian trumpeter .

Speaking of shells, cannot ignore the smallest, but the most famous of them - cowries . These small shells reached deep continental all inhabitants of our planet , and found they had a real application . For example, the Bashkirs - in the form of women's jewelry , talisman or amulet from various diseases , etc. Kauri - coin among the peoples of Africa , Arabia, India, China and American Indians for three thousand years ( until the middle of the XIX century) performed the function of money. The slave markets of the world one black slave had cost from 150 to 200 such Kaurin .

Exhibits of the Museum remind us that we live on the former site of a very ancient huge shallow warm sea TACIS , the northern boundary of which reached the middle of the Urals , the southern border reached to Iran in the east - to the Tobol River in Western Siberia to the west - to the city Saratov. This is evidenced by the stand of fossils collected in the territory of Salavat and neighboring areas, and whose age is hundreds of millions of years, and among them a unique instance - trilobite fossil marine cancer, whose age is about half years!