Cormorants

[Delawareriver]

Originally Posted by Joey Dah Fish

There you guys go trying to control Mother Nature. It seems to me if the food stock was low many would die or in nature the offspring would control itself by having less. I think though sometimes they are a PIA they prove there is a healthy food supply.

So we should let them deplete their food source, kill fisheries then starve to death? How bout just make a management plan to keep their population at healthy level? That's the whole idea of conservation is to keep populations at healthy sustainable numbers without having populations crash

[skate king]

Thanks for the fast response Gerry! Love to watch them diving. Had a few take a fish from me but nothing large. I have seen the Cormorants take bigger.

[june181901]

Andrew Zimmern of the Travel Channel ate one in Vietnam and said they were god awful. "One of the worst things he has ever had". As you may or may not know that guy literally has eaten S**T.

[Joey Dah Fish]

Originally Posted by Delawareriver

So we should let them deplete their food source, kill fisheries then starve to death? How bout just make a management plan to keep their population at healthy level? That's the whole idea of conservation is to keep populations at healthy sustainable numbers without having populations crash

Sorry you disagree Delaware River. I believe Mother Nature will handle her own way. Man has fkd up e erything it touches. I understand your point of view and can appreciate it as well. But remember this. It would be handled by the government making the rules. They have yet to succeed at anything except corruption and wasteful spend while screwing up what they are supposed to fix. If you out them in charge of the dessert their would be a sand shortage in a year.

[Capt Joe]

hmmm, sand for dessert, thats a new one

[flyersnfluke]

The breeding population of Double-crested Cormorants has greatly increased in the NY/NJ area. The larger colonies are on hoffman and swinburne islands (off of staten island, near the verazzano), derelict barges along the kill van kull (south west of the bayonne bridge), and a few islands in and around jamaica bay. The nests you see on bug lights and other water structures pale in comparison to the large colonies. One issue with the cormorants is that they will often nest in the higher trees where heron/egret/ibis colonies are (such as hoffman island), but their guano is so nitrogen rich that it kills the trees. The cormorants will nest in the open, but the wading birds require some vegetation/shade, and are often displaced once cormorants become abundant within the wading bird colonies.

Although cormorants have certainly increased in marine waters in this region, I doubt they have as much of an impact on fish populations as the number of us fishing day in and day out in these waters (recreational and commercial). Cormorant numbers decrease in winter (double-crested corms migrate, with local birds replaced from birds migrating from the north, and we get a small inclux of great cormorants) but populations of several species of cold water fish (winter flounder and whiting) are way down, that's not from cormorant pressure. Check out the waters in sandy hook bay, the reach channel, and all along sandy hook, sometimes it's like a parking lot with boats out there, do you think the thousands of people fishing off these areas on weekends/weekdays have less of an impact than the few hundred cormorants feeding there? In fresh water the cormorants have a much greater negative impact because they deplete the fish populations faster than they can reproduce and mature; these populations are smaller than marine fish populations and do not benefit from the recruitment of new fish through migration/dispersal.

As for Gannets (Northern Gannet), they are highly migratory, with larger numbers observed here in spring (april is peak) and fall. In Spring they are migrating to the breeding grounds (largest colonies in the eastern north atlantic, others in gulf of st lawrence and off newfoundland). The large migrating groups of gannets are generally feeding on herring and bunker in these areas, and if sand lance (sand eels) are abundant they'll feed on those as well.

[Boston Pete]

flyernsfluke --- I totally disagree with your statement that there are hundreds of cormorants:: I would say there are thousands in our waters.




Did you read the article NJ210bands posted?

496 hunters killed 11,653 cormorants in a month on 2 lakes.
A study revealed average cormorant had 8 fish in it's belly.
2008 there were an estimate of 6000 cormorants in recent years it's ballooned to 25,000.

I don't know any fisherman that goes out every day and catches/keeps 8 fish.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Based on what I see I'm thinking more then a hundred in the NY bite area too... There are 30 or more on just on each of the range towers off of Sandy Hook at any given time. Only reason there are not more is because there is not more room on the towers.

If it's correct that they are killing 8 fish per day, then they are killing a lot more fish then recreational fisherman do.

Lets play this out with some assumptions for a day.

200 Cormorants x 8 fish per day is 1600 fish.

Same day lets say on the high side there are 400 fisherman and they each keep 2 fish so that's 800 fish....

[Bass Kicker]

I hate those birds. I trout fish a lot by my house and i see them eating these beautiful trout all the time. There are so many in the lake that if you have one on you might catch a cormorant as well. Those birds definately hurt the fish populations in lakes and especially the oceans. I would love to see an open season on them but im not about hunting the birds.

[flyersnfluke]

Hi Gerry and others,

There are over 1300 breeding pair of cormorants in the ny bight area. The closer colonies are in Jamaica bay and Hoffman and Swinburne islands, there are 2 others on the western edge of long island sound (I assume these birds are feeding in long island sound).

I did read the article, and I am certainly in favor of controlling cormorant populations (breeding colonies) that are near lakes (they're a huge problem in northern NY, and the DEC does not issue enough permits or have a high enough cull rate with the permits they give out). The colonies the article mentions are much much higher than what we have around here. Fish populations in lakes are much more susceptible to crashing due to cormorant feeding because recruitment into lakes is pretty much only possible by stocking them, and with high cormorant numbers stocking doesn't do much.

Locally, in the NY bight, cormorants are spread out where they're feeding; what's the largest number of cormorants you've seen in one area feeding? While they are certainly efficient predators they don't really specialize/target particular species of fish (which we do) , they're very opportunistic. Cormorants are feeding on all kinds of things: crabs, amphipods, spearing, killies, cunner and of course some of the fish we go after (tog, sea bass, fluke etc...). If you're fishing sandy hook bay, the reach channel, or off sandy hook, you'll see cormorants, but the number of people fishing far surpass the number of feeding cormorants, and although we don't always catch as many fish as we'd like, there are times when the bite is on and a lot of the boats do quite well in catching a bunch of fish (and are all of the shorts surviving once we release them). I just don't believe the cormorants are the boogeyman that many make them out to be, I do agree with controlling their populations though, in both fresh and saltwater colonies.

cheers and have a safe Labor Day Weekend