Stunning Superbird footage: An Imperial Cormorant dives 150 feet underwater

Researchers from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the National Research Council of Argentina fitted a small camera on the back of Imperial Cormorant, a South American sea bird. What they recorded was stunning and incredible as no one before watched a bird dive 150 feet underwater in 40 seconds to feed on sea creatures. The bird remained underwater for almost 80 seconds during which a snake like fish found its way into bird’s beak. That’s true, the Cormorants can dive deep enough and stay underwater for more than a minute to search food.

This fascination footage was recorded after a small camera was fitted on the bird by a group of researchers, which included members from two teams, one led by Dr. Carlos Zavalaga along with Ken Yoda from the University of Nogoya and other WCS team led by Dr. Flavio Quintana, who have been studying the feeding behavior of the Cormorants. The experiment was conducted at the coast of Punta León in Patagonia, Argentina.

WSC have been using hi-tech technologies to track more than 400 Cormorants at the same coastal area. Multi channel archival tags and high resolution GPS-loggers are some of the tools used to track and understand the environmental conditions that affect the population of Cormorant.