Such a cormorant can drive fishermen to despair. For example at Dassower See, a side bay of the Baltic Sea near Lübeck. According to a study, this bird species devours between 100 and 120 tons of cod per year, the German Fisheries Association says, which is far more than all German fishermen are allowed to catch in the entire western Baltic Sea. According to the Bavarian State Fisheries Association, the conservation of the native fish species grayling, nose, barbel, trout, hazel and chub is threatened because of the bird. At Lake Constance it is said to have eaten an impressive 300 tons of fish in 2021 alone. And from Saxony it is said that the 800-year-old tradition of carp pond farming will soon come to an end. The cormorant – villain of the skies?
About 90 centimeters tall, shiny black feathers, it likes to sit upright and with its wings spread on tree branches or footbridges above a body of water. The cormorant basically only feeds on fish and is not picky about it; it will get anything that is not too big and easy to get. It likes to attack in groups and can dive long and deep. Fishing associations are in a state of excitement and there is talk of damage amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the cormorant was considered almost extinct throughout Europe. The European Union then placed the bird under protection, and an almost unprecedented recovery followed. There are currently around 50,000 breeding pairs in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Denmark alone, and up to 220,000 in the entire Baltic Sea region including Sweden, Finland and Estonia.
Nabu blames other factors for the fish deaths
These are now too many for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. On Friday she will submit a motion to the Bundestag in which she calls for a nationwide “cormorant management” and a “cormorant action plan”. It says that the protection of native fish species should be given the same priority as the protection of birds. It should be possible for the bird’s eggs to be oiled or for parents to be driven away from the nest at night so that the eggs cool down. Both can lead to the death of the embryos. The fishing association cheers: “We expressly welcome the proposal.”
But is the cormorant really to blame for fish deaths? The population of typical regional species has decreased by up to 97 percent in the past 20 years, writes the Union faction. Conservationists weigh in. Of course, the bird is not responsible for the collapsed populations, explains Kim Detloff from the Nature Conservation Association (Nabu), which is a “transparent maneuver” to distract from the real problems. For example, the high concentration of nutrients in water, often caused by too much fertilizer in agriculture. Or the effects of global warming.
The Thünen Institute for Baltic Sea Fisheries in Rostock is currently investigating whether the hungry cormorant is the cause of the historic decline in cod stocks. For the German Fisheries Association, the answer is already clear: “Deterrence and a significant reduction in the population are necessary.”