That was a very entertaining article; I did enjoy the 'cold, clear and
precise' details and calm narration too.
As someone who interacts with birdos as well as fishos, especially in my
working life, just remember that the English fishermen in question are
catching 'coarse fish' - carp and their cousins - in waterways that have
been messed around with for many years, often artificially stocked and
highly managed. The beastly cormorants are seen as fish predators that are
devouring the (stocked) fingerlings. The fishermens' associations often
pay for this stocking - so they think they are seeing their money go down
a bird's throat.
Having seen Pacific reef egrets devouring my study fish on a coral reef
flat - it is not always fun to watch birds eating other animals.
Helen
<')////==<
I feel slightly qualified to comment on this as I worked on a
government-commissioned and funded project to look at predation of fish by
several species of bird in the UK, namely Cormorant, Goosander and Grey
Heron. One of the reasons for the instigation of the work was the large
increase in the number of inland-breeding Cormorant (subspecies sinensis).
This subspecies breeds inland in trees and often fishes in large cooperative
flocks, similar to Pelicans.
Just to make a slight correction to Helen's comments:
Not just "English fishermen", it is the UK fishermen as a whole and studies
were carried out in Scotland, England and Wales.
The perceived problem is not only with coarse fishing, it is with "put and
take game fishing", on still waters where Rainbow and Brown Trout are
stocked. Rivers here in the UK are also stocked with Brown Trout,
occasionally with Rainbow which don't successfully breed in UK rivers. The
above study was mainly on stocked game fisheries, but which also included
natural populations of native coarse fish.
Stocking on managed still-water game fisheries is of fish much larger than
fingerlings - they are often released as 500-1000g weight. Some are stocked
at even larger weights to produce some trophy specimens for the fishermen.
Stocking of trout on rivers is usually at a smaller size.
The perceived problem is not only with the predation (ie killing and eating)
of fish, but also with the damage done to larger fish that the birds cannot
handle - damage to fish through wounding and marking rather than total
consumption of the fish.
Fishermen insist that Cormorants "eat their own body-weight in fish every
day" - that's one of the wild misconceptions bandied about. This is not
true.
One of the main issues I encountered with the still-water game fishermen was
that some were doing this in a semi-commercial way - taking the maximum
limit every day to sell on for profit. These fishermen were out on the
water every day they could. One of their main gripes from them was not so
much the lack of fish through predation, but the damaged fish which they
could not sell on.
Impossible to discuss rationally with these fishermen - they called
cormorants the "Black Luftwaffe"
Hope that sheds some light on the subject, certainly from a UK (not just
English) perspective.
Liz
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