Look I promise to write about something other than those charming cormorants next time but you really do have to see this video clip

The resident Angling Trust  translator tells me that the sub titles say:

Images of a shocking hour on the Gelderland IJssel near Kampen. Thousands of cormorants eat in no time a piece of river empty. Every day they move further upstream. A major problem for the fish. A week later the cormorants a small 15km upstream drawn every day is a new piece river fished. The consequences are enormous. Whitefish and perch are still hardly any catch. Cormorants protect…?

Horrible isn’t it ? And all those dead fish !

Cormorant swarm

Ever wondered where all those carbo senensis cormorants come from ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfZCjZ6tNh4&feature=plcp

Holland perhaps ?

Here’s a few useful facts about the situation over here in the UK

Cormorants – Key Facts

• Biodiversity of our rivers and many still waters are at serious risk from excessive predation from cormorants

• Numbers have exploded in the last two decades to unsustainable levels

• Rivers and waterways are failing under the Water Framework Directive and of those failing over 50% do so due to poor fish stocks

• Waters that have been heavily impacted by cormorants take years to recover under the present system – sometimes failing all together

• Populations of indigenous species like roach on the Hampshire Avon are under serious threat of extinction

• Modification of our rivers by man has resulted in salmon and sea trout being increasingly vulnerable to cormorants and goosanders as they try to migrate to sea through weirs and hydropower plants

• Direct threat to designated endangered fish species protected under European legislation

• Over wintering cormorants estimated at 23,000. Each individual eats at least one pound of fish EVERY DAY (2,760,000lb of fish each winter)

• Numbers have  increased by the influx of the migrant European sub-species  Carbo Sinensis  from mainland Europe

• The present licensing system is woefully inadequate and does not give us the capabilities to protect our fish properly.

• The Eel Management Plans submitted and accepted by the European Commission estimate that between 29 & 43 tons of endangered eel is eaten by cormorants every year in England and Wales.

• The government’s Moran Committee acknowledged the damage that cormorants can do to inland fisheries