Using cormorants to catch fishes has been a means of livelihood in China and Japan for centuries. As a sport enjoyed by fishermen it has been practised in the West only intermittently. The methods of training the birds which were used in each country, both in the east and the west, varied considerably, although all the training was based on the cormorant's natural ability to swim underwater in the pursuit of fishes, to catch hold of one in the notched beak and carry it to the surface. Left to its own devices, the cormorant then manoeuvres the fish in order to swallow it whole, head first. While it is chasing the fishes underwater, a shoal is dispersed in panic and some rise to the surface, an advantage exploited by the Italian sport of shooting fishes raised by the cormorants. In other countries cormorants arc trained to bring the fish to the fisherman's hand.
