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- <text id=89TT0700>
- <title>
- Mar. 13, 1989: Business Notes:Aquaculture
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Mar. 13, 1989 Between Two Worlds:Middle-Class Blacks
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 49
- Business Notes
- AQUACULTURE
- Catfish Hunters
- </hdr><body>
- <p> A predator haunts the Mississippi Delta, restlessly scanning
- the flooded soils in search of its next meal. Black, hooknosed
- and web-footed, the hunter can dive as deep as 75 ft. under
- water and consume a pound of fish a day. The bird is known as
- the double-crested cormorant, but people in the delta are
- calling it the catfish poacher.
- </p>
- <p> In these parts, where catfish farming has become an
- important business, growers processed 295 million lbs. of the
- fish last year, up from 47 million lbs. in 1980. But in
- Mississippi, which produces 90% of all U.S. catfish, some
- 100,000 migratory cormorants are biting into the profits by
- feasting on as much as $6 million worth of catfish a year.
- Because the birds are largely protected by the Migratory Bird
- Treaty Act, catfish farmers have resorted to elaborate tactics
- to scare the birds away: screaming fireworks, propane cannons
- that boom every 15 to 20 minutes, amplified recordings of bird
- distress calls and even harassment by helicopter.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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