Shoyna

Shoyna ( _ru. Шойна) is a coastal village ("selo"), located on the Kanin Peninsula in northern Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia.

It was founded in the 1930s by fishing families who named the settlement after the Shoyna ("forsaken") River. An abundance of fish and sea life led to prosperity within the collective farm organized there, and by the 1950s some 1,500 persons lived in Shoyna with a fishing fleet numbering more than seventy vessels.

Ultimately, reckless trawling led to the utter annihilation of the benthic life, which decimated the fishery. More than half of the village is now buried under sand dunes deposited by the wind. It is thought that damage to permafrost and destruction of the sea bottom released the sand, which has overwhelmed residents' abilities to control the drifts. [ [http://www.golubtsov.com/index.htm Golubtsov.com] ] The collective farm no longer operates; today, just three hundred inhabitants live at Shoyna, supported mainly by unemployment benefits and pensions.

There is a lighthouse at Shoyna, built in 1960 as a navigational aid to mariners on the White Sea. [ [http://www.lighthousedepot.com/database/uniquelighthouse.cfm?value=6020 Lighthousedepot.com] ] Several shipwrecks line the shore as a testament to the treacherous waters. No roads or railroads connect the area with the south. Transportation to the outside world is by ship or air. [ [http://www.npolar.no/ansipra/english/Regional%20pages/Nenets_2.html Regional description] ] The civilian airport is a dirt runway 650 metres in length. [ [http://www.russianairfields.com/airfield/Shoyna.htm Russian airfields] ] Local travel is by "truckcycles" (motorcycles with truck wheels). [ [http://www.focuspictures.ru/catalog/photo/show/en.3690.100.htm Photo] ]

In 1994, documentary filmmakers came to Shoyna and shot footage of the community. The resulting film, "Zanesyonnyye Vetrom" ("Blown in with the Wind"), was released in 2000. [ [http://www.idfa.nl/idfa_en_filmarchive_film.asp?filmid=1291 IDFA film] ]

Shoyna lies immediately south of the 167 square kilometer Shoyninsky State Nature Reserve, established in 1997 to protect the spring and autumn staging area for the Lesser White-fronted Goose ("Anser erythropus"), an Arctic species threatened with extinction. [ [http://www.ngo.grida.no/wwfap/pdf/ab0197.pdf "WWF Arctic Bulletin" No. 1, 1997] ] In 2002, Dutch researchers discovered that the nearby Shoyna marsh is an important stopover site for Brent and Barnacle geese, with counts approaching almost ten percent of the total Russian flyway population. [ [http://www.ifv.terramare.de/ESF/Graaf.pdf Sandra van der Graaf, "Geese migration at the Shoyna River, Kanin Peninsula", Report on the Shoyna expedition 2002] ]

ee also

* St Enodoc's Church, Trebetherick

External links

* [http://www.maximishin.com/gallery.php?cat_id=93&screen=0&action=images&lng= 2005 photographs by Sergey Maximishin ]
* [http://www.focuspictures.ru/catalog/reportage/show/en.3616.100.htm More photographs]
* [http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Number=627803 Shoyna Google Earth community]

References