Song and his 12 cormorants only fish in the tributaries leading to the lake. (Photo/China Daily)
He sold the bigger fish from the day's catch, mostly carp, to restaurants and individual customers, while the rest were shared out among his neighbors.
Song lives in the village of Huagou on a tributary of Mata Lake. Three decades ago, almost every family in his village fished with cormorants, but now Song is the only one left.
"In the 1980s, there were more than 1,000 cormorants fishing in the lake," recalled the fourth-generation fisherman, who learned his trade at age 16. "Our family has fished with cormorants for at least 100 years. "But as the fish stocks decreased and young people left to work outside of our village, cormorant fishing started to disappear."
Song quit fishing for a few years during the 1990s because the river had become heavily polluted due to industrial development.
