damin sits on the side of the river cooking a meal with a large bird on
his head the bird is a cormorant and damin is a fisherman he is over sixty five now but s
till works every day he is thin and of average height but he is very fit although he is an
elderly man he is strong enough to control his raft in the river where he lives and works
with his cormorants cormorants are large black birds they are good at catching fish becau
se they can swim well underwater their large feet are used to push them quickly through th
e water they can dive down twenty five metres and stay underwater for up to two minutes da
min does not require nets or a fishing rod to catch fish it is done for him by his twelve
cormorants damins fishing trips often begin in the late afternoon he sets off on his bambo
o raft with his birds when he reaches the right place he stops he ties a piece of grass ar
ound the neck of each bird so that it cannot swallow the fish then he pushes the birds int
o the water and jumps up and down and bangs the water with his pole the fish are frightene
d by this at night a light is hung from the front of the raft this enables damin to see be
tter and also attracts the fish the cormorants swim down and catch the fish and bring them
back to the raft the fish are then removed from the birds mouths by damin and thrown into
a big basket later some of the fish are sold and the rest are divided between damins fami
ly and the cormorants cormorant fishing is a traditional chinese skill probably more than
a thousand years old damin enjoys his work and he is teaching his grandson everything he k
nows however few young people are interested in doing this type of work in the modern worl
d in fifty years perhaps there will be no more cormorant fishermen in the world