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02: Cormorant that has just been hooked and caught

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Most of the wild Japanese cormorants used in cormorant fishing, a traditional fishing technique now found mainly in western Japan, are caught in Jyu-o Town, Ibaraki prefecture. Cormorants in flight are lured into a little hut located on a precipitous cliff facing the Pacific Ocean, by using several cormorants as decoys. They are then hooked with a long bamboo pole, placed in bamboo cages with their bills fixed with a little wooden implement called a hashikake, and sent to cormorant fishing sites all over Japan. 01: Decoy cormorants placed in front of a catching hut