Pelagic cormorant

How it lives

It dives from the surface and uses its feet to swim, usually hunting near rocky bottoms and kelp. Sources give dive depths of at least 36 m (120 ft) and up to about 55 m (180 ft). It nests in small groups on narrow ledges of steep sea cliffs, building a saucer of grass and seaweed that it fixes to the rock with its own droppings. Clutches are usually 3 to 5 eggs, incubated for about 3 to 5 weeks, and chicks fledge at about 40 to 50 days. Breeding adults grow white thigh patches, two crests and bright magenta skin near the eye.

Where it goes

Mostly resident. Birds leave frozen Alaskan waters in winter and move south toward California and Baja California. Detail for the Asian coasts is not given in the sources I read.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

Global: Least Concern (IUCN, 2021). About 50,000 breed in each of the Kuril Islands, the Bering Sea islands and Alaska, and about 25,000 breed on the Pacific coast of North America south of Alaska, about 60 percent of them in California. An older US estimate gave more than 120,000 in North America in the 1980s and called the population probably stable. Local threats are oil spills, gillnets that drown birds, El Nino years that cut food, and disturbance at nests.