cormorant numbers over winter have increased from around 2,000 in the early 1980s to nearly 25,000 now.
Even this number appears conservative to some. The Angling Trust's new Cormorant Watch website has logged close to 100,000 sightings of the birds. Anglers in Walthamstow Marshes close to the Lea say they often see 200-300 fly past them in just an hour.
Quote"We tried scare tactics such as firing off a pistol, but that didn't work," said Dennis Meadhurst, secretary of Lee Anglers Consortium, which represents fishing clubs along the Lea. The consortium built reed beds and underwater cages to protect the fish from the birds, but with no success. Meadhurst said it had given up restocking the river because the cormorants, which alert each other to good prey, will simply descend on the new schools and devour them.
"We used to have lots of roach and dace and see gudgeon after gudgeon, but you hardly see any now," Meadhurst said. "We used to take around £60,000 a year [in fishing permits] but then in 1996 the cormorants came in and that was that. We are down to around £15,000 now."
It's not just the fish they swallow but the fish they pierce/damage. I've seen this 1st hand on both trout and coarse waters. They are not an inland bird and have no place on our rivers and lakes in my opinion.
I can see what you are trying to convey to us Ian but when we see things like the following happening on our waters everyday then you must see why they are now referred to as the Black Death.
NB: Read it all and dont just skip through it.
Anglers vs 'the Black Death': cormorants have the edge in battle of the riverbanks | Environment | The Guardian
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Are the RSPB burying their heads in the sand a bit on this matter ?
it certainly sounds like they are to me and thousands of other anglers Ian.
Keith[/FONT]
It's not just the fish they swallow but the fish they pierce/damage. I've seen this 1st hand on both trout and coarse waters. They are not an inland bird and have no place on our rivers and lakes in my opinion.
A load of the examples that are being quoted here related to man-made fisheries. I.e. man fills a lake full of more fish than it would naturally support (in loads of the examples quoted, carp or here, trout). Then cormorant turns up and makes hay whilst the sun shines! Is it any wonder? Free food, and loads of it!! Much easier to catch than in the "wild"!
I bow to your absolute knowledge of ornithology JC2. I'll write to the various publishers of the many guidebooks I have that refer to cormorants as predators of the open seas and coastal waters! Eejit
There's an argument that it's short-sighted and selfish to want to reduce predators such as cormorants, since many fisheries are artificial constructs with unnaturally high stocks of fish, just asking to be eaten, so it serves you right if they are. I get this, up to a point, but it doesn’t convince me all waters should be open-house for all predators. After all, where do we find environments, which have been cultured towards things we want, where we don’t control things that threaten them? Allotments and orchards contain an unnaturally high density of fruit and vegetables, but we don’t abandon them to pests, and most people want to keep the cat out of the goldfish bowl.
A second argument - not that you were making either of these, Jim, I'm just speaking in general - advises us not to worry about predators as their numbers will adjust in proportion to the available prey; nature will come to a balance. But what if that balance is, for say, cormorants, something that applies to the entire region over which they fish, rather than to any particular water they visit? It’s one thing to explain how herons, grebes, pike and perch etc form the natural, sustainable chain in any given water; another to claim a flock of cormorants do. And how long does it take for the balance to be achieved? I have books from two clubs whose lakes and gravel pits are still, after decades, not viable for fishing for anything below carp size. With various cormorant HQ’s nearby, they have never recovered their “balance” and it’s not likely they will, since they can be re-visited by roaming birds.
Thanks to a chance invitation, from a mate who is an AT member as a condition of getting his coaching qualifications, I found myself at the AT AGM as a guest. I had to sit out the actual AGM, but I went to an interesting session on how fish stocks might be improved. Threats to fish stocks were listed in this order of importance: agricultural pollution; sewage pollution; over-abstraction; predation; migration barriers; invasive species; habitat degradation. Some of the attempts to address some of these were discussed.
The speaker at the session said they will continue to lobby for the number of licensed cormorant shootings to be raised to 6,000 p.a. I have to say I don’t feel like objecting.
One of wildlife's great adapters, it could be cormorants next hanging around out side fish and chip shops.
Its not the guidebooks that control what they do though is it? My point is that a cormorant has no actual requirement of the sea and it will go where the food is. I live about as far away from the sea as it's possible to get in this country and there are massive flocks of cormorants thriving here. So yes, by all means write to those publishers and tell them to get their facts straight because the evidence I see every time I go fishing suggests that they're wrong!