Fishing with Cormorants. Isle of Yeso, Japan (1911)

• 56%
• 1911
• Documentary

A novel picture showing a very curious method adopted by the Ainos, the Japanese aboriginals, to catch fish, and illustrating the unexpected forms the ingenuity of half-civilized peoples often takes. Cormorants prey upon fishes, plunging their long necks beneath the waves and rarely failing to "get a bite." No one not a savage would have thought of turning this trait of the cormorants to advantage in the way the Ainos do. Each fisherman sets out in a boat with a little covey of cormorants which he keeps under control by a string attached to their necks. One is reminded of the fairy stories in which folk travel in boats drawn by swans. With a mighty splashing and sputtering the cormorants get to work and the second purpose of the strings round their necks is then apparent. The birds cannot swallow the fish they have caught. When a bird has caught two or three, the fisherman unconcernedly drag them to the boats, a little pressure scientifically applied and the cormorants are obliged to disgorge. They seem to take it quite as a matter of course, and in time learn not to swallow the fish even if their necks are not tied.