Great cormorant blamed for decline in fish stocks
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By Pyry Lapintie
The great black cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is a curious looking bird, which is relatively new to Finland, and which is becoming increasingly common in this country.
Thanks to its ghostly appearance and the large amounts of droppings that it leaves on the islands where it nests, it often attracts the wrath and prejudices of people.
The great black cormorant has been denounced as a bird that fouls the environment, and depletes fish stocks, while destroying fish traps, and damaging the whole Baltic Sea.
Timo Asanti, a high-ranking official at the Finnish Environment Institute, tried to convince the people who showed up at a cormorant evening in the coastal city of Uusikaupunki that there are no ecological arguments for culling the population.
Fishermen are critical even of the bird’s name, which they feel evokes excessively positive emotional connotations.
Asanti said that one proposal for a new name was musta viikinki, or “black Viking”. “It certainly is a plunderer, but the Vikings were much more than that as well.”
Speaking on behalf of professional fishermen in the archipelago, Maria Saarinen, project coordinator of the Finnish Fisheries and Environment Institute, described the predicament of professional fishermen, and denounced the great cormorant as an intrusive species - a “Chinese pelican”, which is partly to blame for the situation.
Saarinen called for measures to put the growth of the population to a halt, and to reduce the existing numbers of the birds.
The number of professional fishermen has declined by 50 per cent in the past year, while the population of great black cormorants has grown 100-fold.
Saarinen admitted that the biggest reason for the reduction of perch and pike-perch was the grey seal. However, she feared that the cormorant could become as big a problem. Saarinen said that in addition to insignificant small fry, the great black cormorant also eats more valuable species of fish, as well as recently stocked fish.
She also claimed that the cormorant affects fish stocks more than professional fishing.
Chairman Mikael Nordstrom of the Ornithological Society of Turku said that the great blacks are in the area, “because there is food here, and the persecution of the cormorants around the world has declined otherwise”.
According to Nordström, the experiences from Sweden in harassing and destroying the birds have caused them to move elsewhere to make their nests.
“Nobody has been satisfied with the results that have been attained there. The greatest problem is not the cormorants, but the deteriorating condition of the Baltic Sea”, Nordström says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.3.2009
PYRY LAPINTIE / Helsingin Sanomat
pyry.lapintie@hs.fi
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| 10.3.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 Great cormorant blamed for decline in fish stocks |
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