Cormorants!

[cwpowell]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512830/Snapped-The-moment-fearsome-pike-swallowed-ravenous-cormorant.html

[Terry]

and they eat 2.5lb bass just as easy and for 30+ ft deep....they don't stand a chance

 

save a bass, kill a cormorant

[mpt]

The feds are in charge of cormorants here in the US and the cormorant lovers are using their influence to stop any control. Essentially there are no cormorants in lakes Huron, St. Clair or Erie because they have no records of sightings. To help change this everyone should go to the form on the DNRE web site (http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/cormorantobs/) and report any cormorants you observe.

 

Read more at Michigan-Sportsman.com: Cormorant Eat Perch - Page 2 - The Michigan Sportsman Forums http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=355694&page=2#ixzz15Z6dvyFj

Here are pics of a cormorants stomach full of perchies.

 

 

 

[Kwan]

wow!

[Smarty Pantz]

I hate those darn things!!! There is this one island on Nosbonsing that is full of those crapping lil buggers & probably is the reason why the fishing hasn't been so great out on that lake....I agree with Terry

save a bass, kill a cormorant

but actually save any & all fish. I love catching any

[Stern Rules]

I saw 2 out at Waterford Ponds last year. Wish I had the camera. I saw them diving a couple times.

[Guest Johnny Bass]

I still cant understand why the GOV protects these creatures. They not only destroy fish populations, but they destroy trees and habitat too. I guess the rich would like nothing more then to clean out our lakes of fish, so we could pay $20 a pound at the supermarket!

[Dave Bailey]

Oooooh boy, this could lose me a few friends. Here is an article I wrote a few years ago, but never got around to submitting to anyone. If you decide to read it please do so from beginning to end before dashing off a critical diatribe, and take the time to digest it.

 

===========

 

Cormorants are ugly! (but leave them alone)

 

Perched above a scrawny neck, on a head which waggles to and fro like a frenetic robot, are a pair of beady eyes which hardly seem adequate to peer past the inelegant hooked bill. The black feathers adorning the body are not particularly sleek or glossy, rather, they perpetually look as if the owner has just emerged from a sooty chimney. In flight they present a crooked profile, and when in the water they ride low, as if they are constantly on the verge of sinking. They waddle on land like an inebriated goose, and their unholy cackle is unmusical and grating. Their vast colonies are bleak guano covered rock piles denuded of vegetation, with stick nests adorning bare dead tree branches reaching in vain for sunlight from which they can no longer gain energy.

 

As you can probably guess I am not enamored of the double crested cormorant, not the least reason of which is that it seems to be having a negative effect on one of my favourite birds, the black crowned night heron. The heron is much prettier, but appears to have a preference for the same sort of nesting areas that are now being usurped by exploding cormorant populations. And it is that population growth which is being viewed with alarm by many in Ontario, an understandable reaction but one that may be misplaced in its proposals about how to handle the situation.

 

A few decades ago cormorants began expanding both in numbers and range at a staggering rate, and can now be seen in almost every body of water in southern and central Ontario, including urban ponds of only a few acres extent. Sportsmen are worried that they may have a debilitating effect on fish populations, and have been clamoring to have controls in place before fish stocks decline.

 

Is this level of concern warranted? Possibly, but in the rush to judgment let’s not simply think that lowering cormorant numbers will bring us back to the halcyon days when fish abounded in our lakes and rivers. Because they still are.

 

There are two misconceptions that I have heard directed at the cormorants, both of them so easily dismissed that if any of you are using them I advise you to stop before some kid fresh out of a grade 6 environmental studies class tears you to shreds. The first is the claim that cormorants are an introduced species. Balderdash! Nobody ever went out to a cormorant colony, fired a net over it, bundled some into a truck, and released them in Ontario. They have always been here, albeit in smaller numbers a few decades ago, and at one time that may have been much more numerous than they are today. The second accusation is that they will eat everything. No, they will not. As a predatory species with a rather catholic diet they may eat almost anything, but that is not the same as everything. Any predator exists in balance with its food resources, and once cormorant populations reach a certain level they will be kept naturally in check by the availability of prey, and there are indications that in some areas of the province they may have already reached that point, and may be declining slightly. Simply put, they cannot eat everything.

 

So what is the reason for the growth in numbers? Whatever it may be it isn’t the bird’s fault, cormorants just doin’ what cormorants gotta do, or for that matter what any animal has to do - eat, breed, and survive. There has obviously been some radical change in circumstance which is allowing them to do it better than before, and that is what we need to address. Have they benefited from the clearer waters brought about by the influence of a true introduced species, the zebra mussel? Cormorants are sight feeders which need to see their quarry, and anyone who grew up during the fifties and sixties will remember that trying to find your nose in front of your face underwater was well nigh impossible in those days when phosphate pollution had algae blooming so thick that you could almost walk from Toronto to Rochester without getting your ankles wet. Okay, an exaggeration maybe, but the water in the lower Great Lakes back then could charitably be described as ‘opaque’. Presuming that a hunting cormorant could even swim through the thick fibrous mats of algae, they would be hard-pressed to see the fish they were after.

 

 

What have we got to complain about?

 

Sport fishers have it better today than at any time in history. Fibreglass or carbon fibre rods are lightweight, exceptionally strong, and sensitive to the slightest nibble. Modern high-tech reels are on a par with anything NASA could produce for a mission to Mars, smooth in action and reliable, and they are spooled with monofilament or braided line that is light-years ahead of whatever primitive twine Izaak Walton used. Fish finders and hand-held gps units enable us to locate the best areas in a lake with hardly a glance at a map, and there are many resources available in print or on the web to help us before the season even starts. Step into a high powered boat that has a shallow draft, a live well, and a quiet 4-stroke engine, and get yourself to your honey-hole. Reach into your tackle box for the latest plastic grub, scented to attract fish better than live bait. Stocking programs by governments and sports clubs have ensured that desirable species are kept at sustainable levels. Halcyon days indeed, but we seem to be worried that cormorants are taking our fish. Well, they are not our fish any more than the cormorant’s fish (not even the stocked ones really, we went and poured them into a lake), and in fact they are a lot more important for a cormorant, which doesn’t have the luxury of a local supermarket. And if, as is often claimed, anglers are mostly practicing ‘catch and release’, then we’re obviously not doing this for the filéts.

 

Which is worse?

 

By picking on cormorants we may be playing into the hands of something more insidious and more of a threat – P E T A and its ilk. If we press for cormorant controls based on our own desire to remove them as competitors then they can more easily sway the public with the idea that we are heartless killers caring nothing for the other denizens of the wild, and we would need to expend resources fighting back. Why not save our energies by not giving them a battle that will have to be fought? Cormorants don’t care if we catch a fish or not, and they will never actively try to prevent us from fishing. They don’t care what we eat, and they will never try to force us to avoid food which our bodies have evolved to eat and turn us into vegetarians. Cormorants will never parade with placards at bass tournaments, handing out brochures slandering us and our lifestyle. Cormorants are blindly going about their business as part of the natural order, P E T A et al are willfully promoting an unnatural, unscientific, and indefensible agenda designed to further their rather twisted view of how we should behave.

 

==============

Edited November 18, 2010 by Dave Bailey

[Billy Bob]

There are THOUSANDS of Cormorants on Lake Erie around the Buffalo Harbor and on the round house just up river from the Peace Bridge. You would have to be blind not to see them.

 

I know duck hunters have take out some......

[jbailey]

good read... but i still hate cormorants

[Dave Bailey]

good read... but i still hate cormorants

 

So do I.

[perchslayer666]

At least they're controlling the dinks.

[Bob]

Not an introduced species but an invasive species. The first nesting pairs were recorded on the Great Lakes less than a hundred years ago at the west end of Lake Superior and they hit Lake Ontario in the thirties. Here's what environment Canada has to say, it's a long read:

http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/factsheets/fs_cormorants-e.html

[Gregoire]

I find it funny that as humans we are constantly looking to place the blame on causes outside of ourselves. Accusing cormarants of lowering fish populations in lakes in Ontario is similar to accusing seals of wiping out the cod population on the Grand Banks. If we ever realize that humans are responsible for 99% of the changes that occur in ouor environment than maybe we will change the way we act as opposed to looking for scapegoats. I do not see how a rational person can blame poor fishing in an area on a bird. Just my two cents

[Terry]

well I think everyone knows that humans are a/the major factor

 

but eliminating people just doesn't sit well with most

 

we are the dominate animal on earth and are self-aware so what is left is to control the numbers of animals to match today's environment and our needs

 

it is a balancing game..but we are top of the food chain

[hammercarp]

I keep reading that cormorants have always been in the great lakes. This is not true. They arrived here in the last century. This persistent myth speaks volumes to me about the nonsense that has been put into peoples heads about the natural world/environment.

The cormorants arrival here in the last century and their great success at exploiting the great lakes ecosystem is a perfect example that we (people) are not the only creatures to upset the balance of nature ( I believe that this whole idea of the balance of nature is simplistic hogwash ) . It was perfectly natural for the cormorants to migrate here and for them to exploit and effect the great lakes environment.

It is also perfectly natural that we are concerned about this and take measures to control their population. An egg oiling campaign every spring would do this and provide work for people. I think cormorants have been studied enough.

 

By the way. Every spring one of the spots I fish for carp is about 50 m. from a cormorant nesting site. It stinks, but I get a kick out of watching them. They are here to stay.

[cwpowell]

I keep reading that cormorants have always been in the great lakes. This is not true. They arrived here in the last century. This persistent myth speaks volumes to me about the nonsense that has been put into peoples heads about the natural world/environment.

The cormorants arrival here in the last century and their great success at exploiting the great lakes ecosystem is a perfect example that we (people) are not the only creatures to upset the balance of nature ( I believe that this whole idea of the balance of nature is simplistic hogwash ) . It was perfectly natural for the cormorants to migrate here and for them to exploit and effect the great lakes environment.

It is also perfectly natural that we are concerned about this and take measures to control their population. An egg oiling campaign every spring would do this and provide work for people. I think cormorants have been studied enough.

 

By the way. Every spring one of the spots I fish for carp is about 50 m. from a cormorant nesting site. It stinks, but I get a kick out of watching them. They are here to stay.

 

 

I think I know the spot you are talking about and boy is it an awful site and smell.

[Gregoire]

well I think everyone knows that humans are a/the major factor

 

but eliminating people just doesn't sit well with most

 

we are the dominate animal on earth and are self-aware so what is left is to control the numbers of animals to match today's environment and our needs

 

it is a balancing game..but we are top of the food chain

 

I do not think anyone but the most radical environmentalist would recommend eliminating people. What I am saying is that instead of blaming animals, or anyone else, we need to take responsability for our actions. If we accept that the way we act inflences fish populations, we will be more likiely to change. If we balme somehting else, and do not accept that we are part of the problem, then we will keep finding scapegoats, because nothing will change and the problem will not go away. Arguing that cormorants are decimating fish populations in the great lakes is like arguing seal populations caused the collapse of the cod fishery in the grand banks.

[Billy Bob]

I do not think anyone but the most radical environmentalist would recommend eliminating people. What I am saying is that instead of blaming animals, or anyone else, we need to take responsability for our actions. If we accept that the way we act inflences fish populations, we will be more likiely to change. If we balme somehting else, and do not accept that we are part of the problem, then we will keep finding scapegoats, because nothing will change and the problem will not go away. Arguing that cormorants are decimating fish populations in the great lakes is like arguing seal populations caused the collapse of the cod fishery in the grand banks.

:rolleyes:

[Lungelarry]

By the way. Every spring one of the spots I fish for carp is about 50 m. from a cormorant nesting site. It stinks, but I get a kick out of watching them. They are here to stay.

The carp or the cormorants?????

[cwpowell]

The carp or the cormorants?????

 

 

 

Probably both, ha. I wouldn't eat a carp even if I was a cormorant, especially from Hamilton.

[hammercarp]

Lungelarry

 

Both. Get used to it.

 

cwpowell

 

You're right. Good idea.

[Guest Johnny Bass]

I do not think anyone but the most radical environmentalist would recommend eliminating people. What I am saying is that instead of blaming animals, or anyone else, we need to take responsability for our actions. If we accept that the way we act inflences fish populations, we will be more likiely to change. If we balme somehting else, and do not accept that we are part of the problem, then we will keep finding scapegoats, because nothing will change and the problem will not go away. Arguing that cormorants are decimating fish populations in the great lakes is like arguing seal populations caused the collapse of the cod fishery in the grand banks.

 

Terry is right. We cant stop the fishermen from fishing(only regulate), but we can stop the comorants.

 

Would you like it if fishermen started keeping everything they caught and that means 1 inch perch? Well that is what these comorants are doing. They are attacking the food chain at the bottom end. If they keep consuming the small fry, how will they grow up to spawn? Maybe we should put a slot limit for the comorants to follow.lol

 

 

Not to mention they are destroying trees(That's even worse then destroying ther fish). I wonder what I would prefer, nice leafy trees, nice shade and a healthy forage for the fish or comorants. Its a no brainer.

 

Death to the comorants!

[Billy Bob]

Death to the comorants!

:good:

[blarg]

I do not think anyone but the most radical environmentalist would recommend eliminating people. What I am saying is that instead of blaming animals, or anyone else, we need to take responsability for our actions. If we accept that the way we act inflences fish populations, we will be more likiely to change. If we balme somehting else, and do not accept that we are part of the problem, then we will keep finding scapegoats, because nothing will change and the problem will not go away. Arguing that cormorants are decimating fish populations in the great lakes is like arguing seal populations caused the collapse of the cod fishery in the grand banks.

 

 

What i find funny is people like you are so quick to blame people but unwilling to consider the solutions that people come up with. True, we have a greater impact on the environment that just about anything else but that doesn't mean we bury our heads in the sand and ignore the problems, even those we might have created. Btw, the seals didn't decimate the cod stocks, but they could be making it recover more slowly or perhaps not at all, if we hadn't over fished the cod it wouldn't matter, but pretending that those cute cuddly seals don't eat a ton of fish won't make the problem go away.