If cormorants have any redeeming qualities, I don’t know what they are.
Hey, speaking as a wharf rat, you gotta respect and admire cormorants. They're hell divers. They work for a living, hunting fish by diving deep and long, and they're always very cool to watch. They aren't like seals and sea lions, which destroy and sink boats and docks by laying on them safely as "protected" species whom the vessel and dock owners are prohibited from "molesting," nor do cormorants steal cash in the form of hooked albacore or such from boats that fish commercially, like the protected mammals do. Cormorants don't eat the tiniest fraction of fish and shellfish consumed by seals, sea lions, otters, etc., all of whose numbers on the California coast have easily quadrupled over the last 50 years.
Trying to reserve a status quo population "balance" in nature is like trying to freeze-frame an ocean wave and measuring all future waves against it: plain lunacy. Nature surges forward with zero regard to any status quo, and human attempts to "preserve" it are all vanities.