Matthias Nanz - a fisherman on the Schlei: Invasion of the cormorants
On February 24, 2020 Grinder Matthias Nanz News for me: “Go to the Schleiufer near Haddeby tomorrow and look at the spectacle with the black birds on the south bank of the Seagull Island. That’s an incredible number!”
Cormorants – the controversial predators
Black birds? What is meant here is not ravens, but... cormorants, sometimes called the “black plague” by fishermen. There is probably no other native animal where opinions differ as much as the cormorant. Long intensively hunted as a food competitor to humans, the cormorant was considered extinct in Central Europe around 1920. There are now said to be around 25.000 breeding pairs living in Germany again. In Schleswig-Holstein, 2017 breeding pairs were counted in 2.800. Of these, more than 40 percent live on the North Sea coast and Lower Elbe, another third on the Baltic Sea coast. The remaining distribution is concentrated inland, especially the area of the Plön Lakes.
In 2010, the German Nature Conservation Association (NABU) and the Bavarian State Association for Bird Protection chose the cormorant as “Bird of the Year”. The two associations wanted to take an offensive approach to protecting the cormorant, which “is being shot and driven away in thousands after its return to German lakes, rivers and coasts,” as it was formulated in the justification. This choice sparked a storm of protest among fishing associations and anglers' clubs. Their stakeholders argued that large populations of cormorants can drastically reduce fish stocks and cause lasting damage by destroying juvenile fish. It must therefore be possible to control the cormorant population.
In this discussion, which is still controversial today, it is undisputed that cormorants capture and eat large quantities of fish during their underwater raids every day: between 300 and 500 grams per bird. It is therefore obvious that a local cormorant population of a few hundred, perhaps even more than a thousand birds can lead, at least temporarily, to a drastic decline in fish stocks in the water in question.
Invasion of cormorants on Seagull Island
This morning, following Matthias Nanz's advice, when I look at the southern bank of the Seagull Island off Schleswig, I see nothing in the distance but the black bodies of the cormorants, close together like a single phalanx.
From the air, the invasion of the feathered underwater hunters becomes visible in all its dimensions: there are probably more than a thousand animals that have settled on the entire Seagull Island. In between, a few seagulls can be seen – peacefully coexisting with the cormorants. It is easy to observe how cormorants set off individually or in groups from their island base to hunt in the Schlei or fly back from there.
“They came because of the herring that we now have in the Schlei,” explains “Ducki” Nanz, “but they also eat everything else they can catch, for example young perch, zander and pike. We fishermen are the ones who suffer.”
The recordings were taken with a Hasselblad L1D-20c (DJI Mavic 2 Pro).
